


The Echoes Resound

by BeautifulSoup



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1990s, Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M, Magic, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2018-10-08 13:39:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 81,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10387878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulSoup/pseuds/BeautifulSoup
Summary: In 1817 magic was returned to England, and Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell were removed from it.Over 170 years later, John Segundus is visiting York for the first time. Everything is new, except from the things that seem familiar. The magic of the North tickles his skin and seems to welcome him. He isn't sure what it means.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing for this ridiculously talented fandom, so I'm going to take the "post and leg it" approach.

Outside the window, the sky turned dark. It was not the dark of night, but of the clouds that had been steadily building on the northern horizon since he had left London. A few spots of rain landed on the window beside him and chased each other towards the back of the coach.

John Segundus kept his eyes on the clouds as he rested his forehead against the window. He had hoped the bus would have passed through the ominous clouds on the journey, but it appeared he was not to be so lucky. He had watched as the signs showing that he was travelling only to The NORTH had started to become more specific. They now said Pontefract, Leeds, York, and each time they passed a mile board and the number beside that last name decreased, his heart thumped against his ribs.

He had turned his walkman off somewhere near Kettering but kept his headphones on. He had only brought three tapes with him, and he had left two of them in his bag in the bus’s hold. There were only so many times he could listen to Morrissey wishing he could get what he wanted in five hours before he started banging his head against the window. Keeping the headphones on had two advantages: they kept his ears warm, and they meant that he could remain undisturbed. Normally, he was happy to be pulled into conversations by strangers - they quite often knew things that he didn’t, and were happy to explain all to his hungry mind - but he felt as though he needed to mentally prepare himself for his arrival in York, and didn’t want any distractions. The tingle of magic on the back of his neck from the teenagers amusing themselves at the back of the bus was enough. He felt it like a waking limb, and thought they were watching their friends in a mirror, judging by their giggling and the bits of conversation he heard. He kept his eyes on the looming clouds.

Truthfully, he didn’t much mind the rain. He would have liked his first impression of the city to be of it in the spring sunshine, glowing golden upon the cathedral and the ancient twisted lanes of the city. That was never going to happen, he knew, because it was February and the bus wouldn’t reach the station until half seven, and it would be long dark by then. The bus had stopped somewhere in the East Midlands, then again at Huddersfield, and each time the clouds had got heavier and the sky had got darker. He knew that when they pulled into the station near the university he would have about an hour’s walk to his bed and breakfast in the city centre. He kept his eye on the raindrops dancing their way along the window, and hoped they would stay as light until he was settled in his room.

Being John Segundus, of course, he was to have no such luck. The moment he picked his bag up from the hold, the heavens opened with a tremendous crash. It was not the crash of thunder, but that of a great deal of water hitting the earth at once. With a sigh he looked out at the downpour, pulled his hood up, and settled his backpack on his shoulders before setting out determinedly into the rain.

*

“Oh my goodness!” His landlady’s exclamation was nearly drowned out by the peal of the thunder that crashed through the air as she opened the door.

“I am so sorry I’m late,” Segundus said, shaking himself free of as much rain as he could in the shelter of her doorway before she ushered him inside. “The walk from the station was rather longer than I had anticipated. I hope I haven’t kept you.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, dear!” She badgered him out of his coat and shuffled him down the corridor into a very plush and - he was quite taken aback by the strength of it - very pink sitting room. “Now, you must be Mr Segundus. I haven’t any other guests at the moment, so you needn’t worry about disturbing anyone. Let’s get you a cup of tea. Oh dear me, you must take those shoes off! In fact, I’ll take you up to your room just now and you can get changed into something warm and dry. My goodness! Walking all this distance in such rain!”

Left alone in his room for a moment, Segundus took the opportunity of a deep breath and the first true quiet of the day. He had almost expected Mrs Pleasance to go so far as to offer to help him change, which he was indeed glad she had not. He hung his wet clothes over the radiator in his room (it had been set on full when he had entered, but he turned it down to a less sweltering degree) and put on some dry clothes. This was a little more difficult than he had expected, as the corner of his backpack he had worried was getting a little worn had, apparently, started leaking. The pair of trousers he had packed at the bottom were soaked, and he cursed under his breath when he realised his books were getting rather wrinkled. He put the trousers on the back of a chair and moved it beside the radiator, and took his books out to dry. Only then did he put on the driest clothes he could find (which were all a little damp, but not uncomfortably so), and head back downstairs to the sitting room.

“Oh, that’s better!” Mrs Pleasance got to her feet and clasped her hands to her ample bosom. She had set out a pot of tea and two cups on the coffee table, along with a plate of biscuits and two whole cakes. “Now, I wasn’t sure if you’d eaten, but have some tea, it’ll warm you right up. Have you come far, love?”

He settled himself on the sofa as she poured him a cup of tea. He accepted the offer of milk and sugar; although ordinarily he wouldn’t take either he felt that both would help him warm up. He said as much, and she agreed enthusiastically with his reasoning, which was apparently so unusual to see in young men these days.

He sat with her for a couple of hours in surprisingly enjoyable conversation. Middle-aged women had always been a breed he had got on well with. They liked his tidiness, his good manners, his enquiries after their own health and families; in turn they made him feel comfortable and at ease. Mrs Pleasance was perhaps the most typical example he had ever met. When he admitted that he hadn’t eaten, she bustled through to the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with a fry up, saying “now you’ll forgive me if your breakfast is a repeat, but it’s what we’ve always got, and I was planning to do a shop tomorrow”. While he ate, he told her about his journey, and she told him about her family and why she ran the business - the house had been left to her by her late husband (God rest his soul), and it was such a _large_ house once the children had moved out that she fair rattled around in it. A friend had mentioned to her an acquaintance of theirs the difficulty they had trying to find accommodation in the city centre for a couple of nights, and thus the idea of Mrs Pleasance’s bed and breakfast was born.

By the time she had finished this story it was past ten and Segundus was stifling his yawns. When she noticed, he apologised, and was rather firmly not to even think of it, then packed off to bed.

Breakfast was usually between half six and half seven, she told him as he climbed the stairs, but he shouldn’t worry if he overslept, she would be around the house until eleven. He smiled down at her and wished her a good night.

He changed into his pyjamas - a rather ratty-getting pair of boxers and an old Oxford t-shirt from his university days - and fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just love Mrs Pleasance. Not even sorry.  
> You can find me on tumblr @speakingskies (for JSAMN things) or@thebeautifulsoup (for a jumbled mess of everything)


	2. Chapter 2

The sounds of a city coming to life woke him in the morning, helped by the light through the chink he had left in the curtains. He groaned and pushed his face into the pillow, but then his mind woke fully enough to remember where he was. He got out of bed and showered yesterday’s journey from his skin.

In the dining room, he could hear Mrs Pleasance singing happily along with the radio, something that sounded suspiciously like Barry Manilow.

“Hello?” He called out, and a moment later her head popped around the doorframe.

“Good morning, petal!” She called, grinning. “Breakfast won’t be a moment. Sit yourself down and have a bread roll. Fresh baked this morning! There’s tea on the table. I heard you coming downstairs.” He wasn’t surprised. The house was ancient, the staircases up to his third floor room crooked and creaking. He wouldn’t be able to sneak in late at night, he realised, if he were the type to do so.

“Thank you,” he said, and settled himself. He poured himself a cup of tea from the pot and drank it black with a roll and marmalade, both of which seemed to be homemade and both of which were delicious.

“There you are, love,” Mrs Pleasance bustled through and slid a fry up in front of him. Bacon, sausages, black pudding, eggs, tomatoes, and mushrooms crowded the plate, and he rather regretted the roll. “Let me know if you need any seconds, you look like you need fed up, if you’ll excuse me saying so.”

“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” he said, tucking in. “I’ve been told more often than I can count.”

After breakfast he set out to see the city. The weather had cleared overnight, and the weak February sun cast the buildings in a watery light. The city itself seemed bleary as he walked the walls, as if it were only just waking itself.

Scraping through his wallet, he paid the admission fee for the cathedral and spent almost two hours there, studying the statues: the stone ivy which had grown and twisted itself around a pew, the row of fifteen kings, the rose which had wound around a lectern which had remained in place since 1807, the countless dragons and animals and small carved people.

He placed a hand on one of the great columns to feel the grain of the stone beneath his palm, and was overcome with a moment of dizziness. He suddenly felt much colder, the cathedral seemed darker, and he heard an odd low grating noise that almost sounded like speech (it seemed to say _it is not too late_ ). He thought he felt something curl around his ankle, but he blinked down at his feet and there was nothing there, and he felt warmer again. He looked around, and the great nave was once more lit by the pale February light.

He was a little disconcerted by this, and went up the tower mainly because he had already paid to do so. He was still a little lightheaded, but the wind that caught at his hair at the top revived him. The city was spread out below him like a model, a toy that was now his to explore. He laughed to himself, pressing a knuckle to his lips to hide his smile as the cold winter wind stung at his cheeks.

Something in his chest had come undone, and he let the wind at the top of the tower carry it away. He watched it, caught the form of it in the shape of a blackbird in flight.

*

The next morning, he packed his rucksack and set off on an expedition. He got the bus to Helmsley, and went in search of his destination. He knew where he needed to go to get there, and was immensely glad of his innate sense of direction when he got out of the town and away from the road.

The moors stretched away on either side of him, empty of anything but himself and the birds. They were ravens, he thought, or maybe they were closer than he realised and they were starlings. There were enough of them for a murmuration, anyway. He stopped for a moment on the path, near a hawthorn tree twisted and shaped by the wind until it was almost doubled back on itself, and spread his arms.

He grinned as the wind caught up his hair and his jacket flapped around him. He breathed it in: the heather, the damp earth, the rain on the horizon. His heart sang with it. He had stayed in London too long. If he had known what this would be like, would he have stayed at all?

Carried away by the sensation in his chest, he let out a shout, a wild cry that formed itself somewhere deep within him. It wasn’t something he had done in years, and as the noise let itself loose from his throat he felt something else go with it, something hard and heavy he had been carrying around for far too long. With one last inhale, he opened his eyes again and continued on his way.

There was something on the crest of the hill that hadn’t been there before, something that was neither plant nor bird. Segundus’s mind came back to him and he realised it was a person.

It was a tall, dark, ragged sort of person, coming down the hill towards him, with long hair blowing about in the wind. Although it seemed to have been tied back, the wind had pulled it loose so that it was blowing all around the person’s head. The man’s head. Segundus had to bite his lip from laughing. It was as if Heathcliff himself was coming over the moors towards him.

“I thought I heard a city boy,” said Heathcliff as they neared each other on the path. At the closer distance, he seemed less like he had just strolled from the pages of a Brontë novel: he wore a black t-shirt, the logo of which Segundus couldn’t make out under his leather jacket; His jeans were tucked into black biker boots, bagging a little at the top. He did not look appropriately dressed for hillwalking, yet it was Segundus who suddenly felt ridiculous in his hiking boots and cagoule.

“You lurk around on the moors waiting for city boys, do you?” Segundus asked. Heathcliff’s face fitted well with his first impressions, as he stopped close to Segundus on the path. Although he wasn’t handsome, exactly, something about his eyes gave an impression to the contrary. Dark and hooded and brooding, and complimented by a twisted smile that crept up one side of his face. Segundus could not quite work out if the joke he was smiling at was one they were in together, or one that Segundus was the butt of.

“Not ordinarily,” he said. His voice was as rough and wild as the landscape, as if a piece of the north Yorkshire limestone had been chipped off and sculpted into a man who had been set loose to roam. “Yet here we are.” Magic prickled the inside of Segundus’s elbows, or the memory of magic.

“I hadn’t realised there was anyone else around,” Segundus said, after he had grown itchy being looked at by this strange man. He wondered if he ought to be scared, being approached out here by someone who – in all honesty - looked like a bit of a thug. “Sorry if I disturbed your…” But what this Heathcliff might have been doing out here he did not know.

“You didn’t,” Heathcliff answered, the merest hint of a laugh in his voice while that indecipherable smile tugged on his mouth. He looked over Segundus’s shoulder at the horizon and nodded towards it. “Rain’ll be here soon,” he said. Segundus looked behind him and saw that the heavy banks of clouds were indeed closer than he remembered. “I’d get back to town if I were you.”

Segundus was a little taken aback, being given advice on the outdoors by someone who looked like he had just wandered out of a Motorhead concert and found himself in the heather.

“I have a destination in mind,” he said, rather more sharply than he had meant to. “I’m sure I’ll get there before it comes on.”

Heathcliff looked him up and down, eyes tracking slowly and disdainfully. “Oh,” he said, and he drew it out like disappointment. “You’re one of them.”

“Pardon?”

“One of them,” Heathcliff (Segundus found he was unable to think of the man as anything else by this point) sighed heavily and adjusted his posture. It looked almost as if he were leaning against a tree or a wall, but there was nothing beside him. Segundus wondered if the man was being held up purely by his own disdain. It didn’t seem unlikely. “Starecross is about half a mile if you follow the path. You’d’ve been quicker on the bus.”

“Excuse me?” He was a little stunned to be so easily found out.

“Starecross,” Heathcliff said, slow and loud this time as if he had decided that Segundus was either profoundly deaf or profoundly stupid. He pointed behind him. “Fifteen minutes. That way.”

“I’m… How did you know?”

“What other _destination_ is there nearby?”

“So where are you going?” He felt bold as he rarely did, facing this strange wild-eyed man on the moor.

“Me?” He laughed. “I’m goin’ home.” He eyes glinted with something as he looked at Segundus again. “I’ve found my city boy for the day.”

Heathcliff looked at him for a moment longer, just until his neck started to itch with it, before continuing on downhill. “Enjoy the hall!” He called back over his shoulder, just as Segundus had set off again. “But I doubt it’ll be what you’ve dreamed of.”

Segundus found himself stomping up the hill after that, his mood turned around completely. The rudeness of some people! He tried to shake the encounter from his mind, and focused his attention instead on the top of the hill ahead of him.

He was soon over the crest the man had appeared from, and could see no further past it behind him. Ahead, though, he could see the remains of some ancient dwellings, tumbling down into the moor. Before long he reached a wall, dry stones like the others he had passed, but taller, and behind it buildings with stormy grey roofs.

Despite what Heathcliff seemed to think, he had not dreamed much of Starecross, and therefore did not have much in the way of expectations. It was a little shabbier than the pictures he had seen, although that may just have been the dimming light.

He looped around the wall of the main building, picking his way along the riverbank until he reached the village itself. He knew the village had once been a separate entity, but over the years since Starecross had been established as a school (and then a college, and then a university) the buildings had one by one been taken over, until the whole area had become the campus. He passed a few people - most of them younger than him, but not all - as he wandered up what passed for the main street. The hair on his neck stood up the closer he got to the main building, then the hair on his arms, until his whole scalp was prickling. There was magic being done; he could smell the tang of it.

The main building was not particularly imposing. It was the same kind of low, hunkered style as the rest of the village, as if the stones themselves were ducking their heads against the wind off the moor. He crossed a bridge - a modern addition, but an old stone packhorse bridge shambled alongside it - and was in front of the building. He wandered up to the front door, almost spinning himself around to look at the garden - the bramble bushes with their vicious thorns visible from their lack of leaves, the apple trees in their state of February undress - and was dismayed to find that he needed a code to enter the building. The door was firmly shut, no matter how he pushed at it, and the keypad beside it blinked at him imperiously. He wandered a little further off to investigate some of the border shrubs while keeping his eye on the door, but nobody either came or went for him to slip through. He fancied he saw the door open, once, saw it draw slowly upon itself and reveal the dark hall behind it, but he blinked and the door remained as shut as it ever had.

He sighed and headed back to the village. He spared one last glance to the building as he left, and thought he saw a glimpse of a man’s face at an upstairs window: a long, thin face with a crooked, hungry grin. But again, he blinked and the face was gone. He supposed he was hungry, after his walk. He had passed a tearoom in the village that seemed as if it would do well enough for lunch.

The rain was heavy enough when he was leaving that he caught the bus back. It was a couple of quid he wasn’t sure he could spare, really, but he didn’t want to show up on Mrs Pleasance’s door soaked to the skin twice in one week.


	3. Chapter 3

The fourth night of his visit brought the reason for his visit.

It was the third Wednesday of February, and the _Learned Society of York Magicians_ was holding a public lecture in the museum. He readied his smarter clothes (he was extremely grateful to Mrs Pleasance for lending him her iron) and set out for the lecture.

It was barely a ten minute walk to the museum (it was part of the reason he had chosen the lodgings at Lady Peckett’s Yard in the first place, hunkered over a Yellow Pages and a battered map of York in a greasy spoon in Hackney), and the rain mercifully stayed off although the scent of it stayed in the air.

The lecture was given by a Professor Fforde, who was well known in the circles of magical history and not known at all outside of them, despite a short series of documentaries she had presented for Channel 4. Her lecture was broad, touching on the Dark Age of English magic, of what could be learned about the presence of magic from the absence of it. She spoke of the King’s Letters, which scholars had been trying to decipher for over a hundred and fifty years. There had been the odd breakthrough (in the 1920s Gregory Richmond had managed to translate the word “rain” (which, unsurprisingly for a book written by a Northerner, appeared rather a lot), and in the 1970s a cleaner had spilt a little bleach on a researcher’s notes and as a result the entire community had come to the conclusion that the recurring phrase they had thought meant “virgin sacrifice” actually meant “lemon thyme”, much to everyone’s embarrassment), but on the whole not much progress had been made since the Book had been rewritten following the disappearance of Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell in February 1817.

Although most of it he already knew, much of it he hadn’t thought of since university, and John Segundus found it incredibly inspiring. He took so many notes that he had to resort to borrowing a sheet of paper from the man next to him.

At the end he wanted to rush forward and speak more to Professor Fforde, but she had been ushered from the stage and magicked from the building by the committee before he got to the stairs.

“Don’t be disappointed, lad,” the man he had borrowed the paper from said. Segundus looked at him properly for the first time, and saw kind eyes bracketed by crows feet. The sight of him and the reassuring northern cadence of his voice made Segundus smile. “She’ll be off for her tea. The rest of us tend to meet up in the pub after, if you’d like to join.”

Segundus said that he would. _What_ , he thought to himself, _was the use of coming to the York Society without being social?_

The man’s name was George Honeyfoot, and he bought Segundus a pint of beer and introduced him to his friends. Some of them seemed a bit wary of him – he was a Southerner, after all, and at least twenty years younger than any of them, and as always with magicians there was the barrier of his name for them to get over and the assumption that it was all a tedious joke – but Mr Honeyfoot had warmed to him quickly, and his opinion of character seemed to hold some sway with his companions.

The conversation grew quite heated in the dark wood surrounds of the pub. One of the men – a Mr Kendrick, Segundus hadn’t caught his first name – got onto the subject of the regulation of magic, and judging by the groans and eye rolls from his friends this was an old favourite of his he was glad to exercise on a new acquaintance. Segundus thought he heard one of the men say “Not again, Alf,” under his breath.

Magic, according to Mr Kendrick, needed stronger regulation: children should be banned, practitioners should need licenses. It was, he said, the only way to stop the accident he had read about last week in the Mail.

“I have to say I disagree,” Segundus said to him, leaning towards the man and speaking loudly to be heard over the din of the pub. “Education is the most important thing we can do to ensure safe practise. Magic does not abide by our rules, it’s a natural part of us. You’d be as well trying to regulate sex. Yes, put age limits on certain kinds, but when has that ever stopped anyone? The best we can do is to make sure that people know – from as early an age as possible – the dangers and the precautions.” A number of the men around the table laughed, and Segundus was a little sorry to see Mr Kendrick’s face turning red, but a warm hand clapped down on his shoulder before he could say anything that might apologise for how he had phrased his point.

“Well said, John!” Mr Honeyfoot cried. “I haven’t heard anyone put it nearly so well!”

He returned to his room a little lightheaded from drink and with an invitation to have lunch with the Honeyfoots on Sunday. He spent the evening scribbling down his thoughts from both the lecture and the meeting in the pub, consulting his books (the few he had brought with him, and cursed himself for packing so lightly) and wondering if he would ever see the King’s Letters for himself. He had seen the engravings, of course, and the passages that had been copied into other books.

What had happened to the Book itself – or, he should say, _him_ self – was a mystery. There were, of course, rumours of dark magic and taxidermy, of skin turned to leather and bound into a book and kept in a warded box in the Tower of London, but none had been substantiated. _Something_ must have happened to it, Segundus knew, but what?

He sat with his notes and his books until the foxes started screaming in the streets, when his tiredness suddenly draped itself over his shoulders and he slouched the couple of feet to his bed.

*

Thursday came, and Segundus woke with a dry mouth and aching neck, and realised he had fallen asleep in his clothes. He yawned and reached to his neck to loosen his tie before realising he wasn’t wearing one – hadn’t worn one since school, in fact.

He read over his notes, trying to pick up the strands his tired and lightly intoxicated mind had pulled loose last night, and decided to go to the library. His work was coherent in a way he hadn’t expected, considering how late he had stayed up, and he felt a little pride that his scholarly talents hadn’t waned much in the two years since he had done his Master’s. He had kept up with the news, of course, but his access to journals had been limited, and new books were a luxury he had been unable to afford.

The air was clear and cool as he headed out, although the pavements were damp and spotted with grey puddles. He breathed it in as he retraced his steps from last night. The central library was famous for its collection of books on magic, which was only to be expected given the local history. There was a rumour that the archive held the Book of the Raven King itself, although Segundus doubted it. Another rumour, which was more likely but less relevant to Segundus’s current line of enquiry, was that it contained the original manuscript for the first biography of Jonathan Strange.

He found a desk and left his things there before winding his way into the stacks. He browsed for some time, letting his fingers run over the spines as he looked for the titles he needed. Once, he thought he caught movement from the corner of his eye. He glanced behind him but there was no one there, nothing but the scent of wind over heather.

With his chosen books in his arms, he returned to his desk. He wrote furiously – copying out paragraphs for further study, notes, cross-references – with an intensity he hadn’t felt in years. He should have done this sooner, he thought as he went out for a cup of tea in the afternoon. He should have taken the time out to read and write and feel the love of this knowledge surge in his breast, rather than working all his waking hours, only to slump on his uncomfortable bed for a few hours of restless sleep and start the whole cycle again.

What would he do for this life? Free to study and listen to lectures. He thought of George Honeyfoot and his comfortable life: wife and three children and a house in the suburbs, time to go to the Society meetings and talk in the pub afterwards. It was a peculiar kind of jealousy, not something Segundus was prone to at all, but at that moment, with his hands curled round a cardboard cup of tea while he waited for a bacon roll from the snack van, it was a life he ached to taste. The wife and children he could do without, really, but the time and the money he knew he could do so much with.

The thought of spending his Sunday afternoon with a man he had met once and a family he had only heard about suddenly felt like a terrifying prospect. Honeyfoot had seemed kind and open last night, but perhaps that had been the drink. What if he got there and Honeyfoot’s wife was appalled at her husband’s decision to invite a complete stranger to eat lunch with their family?

He thought of these things, all the ways it could go wrong, and dismissed them. He knew that he would be welcome, could almost see Mrs Honeyfoot’s bright, welcoming smile and smell the roast lamb from the oven. He had known when he had first spoken to Mr Honeyfoot, had first seen the warmth in his eyes, that he would be a friend. He knew it with the certainty that it would rain in York in February.

Leaving his worries outside, he went back to his work and stayed there until a young librarian tapped him on the shoulder to tell him they were closing.

He spent the next two days there, at the same table, filling up his new notebook, the same librarian tapping his shoulder each evening with an increasingly familiar smile.

*

Sunday lunch at the Honeyfoots’ was something so domestic and warm that Segundus hadn’t experienced for such a long time, that it made his chest ache a little.

It was busy and noisy, teenagers running around and shouting at each other, Mrs Honeyfoot pretending to be annoyed at them getting in the way, but smiling fondly as she tutted. George showed Segundus around the house: the garden and its shed, the kitchen, dining room, living room, the closed door of an office with a wink and the promise of “after lunch”. Every space on every shelf was crowded with books, photographs of three pretty girls growing up in fits and starts. There was artwork on the walls showing changes in talent and interest through the years.

Only two of his three daughters were at lunch, George explained – Jane and Beth, who were sixteen and thirteen and giggled as their father introduced them, as Sarah was in her second year of university in Durham and couldn’t make it down because of some kind of deadline.

“She’ll be here next week, though,” Mrs Honeyfoot said as she set a plate of parsnips in the middle of the table. She seemed to sense Beth pulling a face behind her, and swatted her lightly with her dishtowel without even looking. “Her course keeps her so busy, and all of her societies.”

Something about this statement made Jane laugh and elbow Beth in the side, making her spout juice from her nose, and Segundus had to smile at their shared, secret joke. Jane caught his eye and winked. George seemed not to have noticed any of this, and was instead talking about Sarah's societies.

“- of course you would expect it from a fine Northern university, but she hasn’t taken it up. I have tried and tried to encourage her, but she prefers the newspaper.” Jane rolled her eyes and Segundus had to look away to stop himself from laughing.

The roast was delicious, and the conversation moved around enough to keep him from feeling as if he was either imposing or the centre of their attentions. The doorbell rang in the middle of pudding, and one of Beth’s friends was ushered to the table and served a pile of crumble with no fuss.

When lunch was done and Segundus’s offers to help with the washing up had been refused, George showed Segundus his office.

The living room of the Honeyfoots’ spacious house was lined with bookshelves, neatly presented and varied in topic and genre, as if each member of the household had a say in its make-up: Patrick O’Brien sat next to John Berger sat happily next to Judy Blume, their spines all tidily aligned.

George’s office, however, was crowded and focused. The shelves were full to bursting: books that would not fit were stacked on top of each other in the space between the books on the shelves and the shelf above; periodicals teetered in unstable piles on the edge of his desk; loose sheets of photocopied articles stuck their corners out from everywhere he looked; a mound of books on the windowsill gave the impression that it had once been separate piles until they had all slumped together for comfort.

“Oh,” said Segundus, looking around at the four walls of crammed bookshelves. The only spaces were for the door and the desk, which along with the precarious towers of periodicals held a computer and a fax machine.

“I’m sorry it’s a bit of a mess, Maggie’s always nagging me to-”

“It’s wonderful.” Segundus crossed to the shelf across from him and ran his fingers along the titles. “May I?” He asked, and George nodded enthusiastically.

“Of course! Make yourself at home!”

Segundus pulled down the book and flicked through it, then replaced it and took its neighbour. He made his way along the shelf in this manner, taking up each volume and feeling the weight of it in his hands, reading paragraphs at random. His heart ached when he took up a copy of Moore’s _Landscape and Lore,_ as he was reminded of his own copy, mouldering in his damp Hackney bedsit. He flicked through and found the notes George had made in the margins.

“Do you practise much?” Segundus asked when they had sat in the two chairs squeezed into the space.

“Oh, no,” George said, lacing his fingers together over his stomach and leaning back. “I tried, as a boy, but never had much talent for it. I potter a little now and then, but I’m quite happy reading and discussing ideas and history.”

“I wonder why it is,” Segundus said, more thinking out loud than truly asking, “that some people are more magical than others? It seems something that nobody has quite got to the bottom of. Is it genetic? Can it be influenced by upbringing? Is magic like music or sport, where it’s mainly down to practise?”

“I had an uncle, friend of my father’s really, who was convinced that a pregnant woman should eat as much apple cake as possible to ensure her child had a magical talent, and avoid rowanberry jelly. Nonsense of course, but my mother did like apple cake so it was no great ordeal for her.”

It was dark outside by the time Segundus headed home, promising that the next time he was in York he would be sure to call.


	4. Chapter 4

“Do you mind if I stay a while longer?” He asked Mrs Pleasance over breakfast, the morning after his seventh night in York.

“I’ve got no future bookings that require your room, you can stay as long as you like. The single rooms aren’t taken often, it’s mainly couples and families I see.” She smiled indulgently down at him. “You like York, then?”

It wasn’t a question that should have taken him by surprise, not given his own enquiry, but he found that it knocked the breath from him and he had to think for a moment how to phrase his answer. He wasn’t sure how to tell her that he could no longer imagine himself anywhere else. He thought of the lectern in the cathedral, the stone briar grown twisted around it in an hour of magic over a century ago. The stones of York had wound themselves similarly around him.

“I do,” he said at length, feeling a smile unfurl across his face. “It feels more like home than anywhere I’ve ever been.”

“Well, I’ve never ruled out a long-term lodger myself, and you’ve been nothing but a joy to have in the house. You just let me know your intentions, lamb, and we can see about it. There’s a lot to be said for a steady income.” She gave him a motherly pat on the shoulder and went back through to the kitchen.

He grinned to himself suddenly, taken up with the idea. He had nothing to hold him to London, he realised, and nothing to take him back to Surrey, not really.

He had struggled after leaving university, unsure where to go or what he could possibly do with the piece of paper in his hand that declared him a _Bachelor of the Science of Thaumaturgy_. He had focused on the history, on the old spells, and hadn’t had quite enough interest in any other areas to study them. Most of his peers had graduated with joint degrees: Magic and Engineering, Magic and Biology, even Magic and Theatre in Janine’s case. He had been so single-minded, however, that he hadn’t wanted to spread his attention. Yes, he had taken the compulsory straight History courses that did, admittedly, help put his magical learning in context (Jonathan Strange’s actions in the Napoleonic wars had made more sense after that particular lecture, and then there was the fascinating module on the Johannites), but it didn’t give him an _industry_ to enter, and he had watched his friends whisked into jobs while he dithered.

In truth, he had never wanted to enter an industry. He had wanted to stay in academia, studying and discussing the finer points of magic with his peers, experimenting with spells to refine the old and invent the new. That dream had proved to be unrealistic.

When an uncle he had never known had died towards the end of his last term as an undergraduate and left him a rather unexpected sum of money, he had put it towards his Master’s degree. He had even published an article in a not-unrecognised journal, two if he were to count one he was included in as a sub-author due to his assistance in the research. He had not, however, been able to find funding for a PhD, and had been ejected from the realm of higher education rather unceremoniously (after the ceremony, of course).

In the meantime, he had worked at a series of jobs he did not want to do, but had no real choice in. He had gone to London from Oxford as it seemed to be what was expected of him, and found that he had to work so many hours to afford it that the whole appeal of living there - the people, the museums, the public lectures, the nightlife - had been out of his reach more often than not.

London had felt like an obligation: he was young, a new graduate, opportunities supposedly stretching out around him, therefore London was the place to be.

York was different. He couldn’t say why he wanted to stay, to move his life two hundred miles north. There were, statistically, fewer opportunities for him there, but he felt it tugging on his ribs. It felt right, and he had not done anything spontaneous for years. He felt overdue a bout of youthful impulsivity, before his youth ran out altogether. His mid-twenties had overtaken him more swiftly than he had anticipated, and he knew he had to do something before he stagnated there, in his tiny Hackney bedsit.

So, after two years in London, he quit his jobs out of the blue (the first had been his favourite, a second hand bookshop off King’s Road; the other had been in a bar near his bedsit that he had been glad to be rid of). The bus ticket he had bought to take him back to that life instead took him to hand in his notice to his landlord.

He stayed in London for a week, working out his notice at his jobs and taking his leave of the city. He went to Soho Square and Hanover Square to join the usual crowds of tourists looking at houses that weren’t there, exclaiming to each other that they had seen something. Segundus had spent a lot of time looking at the not-spaces, the tricks of magic, and had spotted several things which had always turned out to be birds. They were birds who saw no reason not to alight on a railing which no longer existed, and he had seen more than one passer-by being startled by a pigeon or a starling appearing out of thin air in front of them.

Packing up his room, it was hard not to think of how little he had to show for his life. Two suitcases held the sum of his possessions: clothes and books and a handful of keepsakes from childhood holidays and university, a few old letters and postcards. He thought of George’s house, filled to bursting with the comfortable clutter of lives mingled together and grown, and shook his head to clear it. He took a last turn around the small, sad space to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything and, putting his suitcases down in the hall, locked the door behind him for the last time and posted the keys through the letterbox.

He had a bus to catch.

*

His second journey was kinder than his first.

The weather was cool and overcast when the bus pulled out of Victoria station, but the further north they travelled the brighter the day became. When he arrived in York the sun was shining and warm. He closed his eyes and turned his face to it, letting it soak him. When he got to the front of the station he turned at the sound of a car horn and saw George Honeyfoot waving at him from across the road. Segundus accepted his offer of a lift, his heart swelling as he smiled to himself the whole of the drive as he thought about how he had made a better friend in a week in York than in two years in London.

He had savings enough to last a little while, maybe two months if he was careful. Mrs Pleasance’s rent was reasonable, breakfast and utilities included, but if he was to stay then he would need a job.

Mrs Pleasance’s chattiness was not constrained to her own home, it seemed, nor its usefulness limited to making her guests feel at ease. The day after Segundus’s return and mention of his desire to find a job, she had bustled into the sitting room while he was reading a book and announced that she had been shopping (Segundus stood and helped her to the kitchen with her bags) and had heard the manager of Thoroughgood’s bookshop, just off Stonegate, was looking for an assistant, as his previous employee had just gone off to “find himself” in Thailand with hardly a week’s notice.

For the first time in years, Segundus thought his luck might be turning. He went to the shop the next day and spoke to the manager, a rather stout man by the name of Burntwood, who shook his hand and showed him around the deceptively deep, twisty shop. Shelves pressed in on all sides, books stacked, tottering atop each other in a jumble. It was an odd collection of new releases and second-hand, and the further into the depths of the shop they went the older the stock got. A few times he thought he saw some ancient old leather-bound volumes, but when he looked back they would only be dog-eared Danielle Steeles or John Grishams.

“Can you start on Monday?” Burntwood asked, when they returned to the front of the shop.

Segundus told him he could, and left with a smile.

*

In his second week of working in Thoroughgood’s, an interesting book landed in front of him. He had been staring down at the order book in front of him, frowning at the page and wondering why the manager was paying so much for such worthless volumes.

The book that landed in front of him was titled _How to putte Questiones to the Dark and understand its Answeres_ , and it hit the counter with such force that it made him jump.

“Oh,” said a dark voice, which didn’t sound particularly impressed. “It’s you.”

Segundus looked up, still a little jumpy from the fright of having a book crash through his concentration. “Heathcliff!” He exclaimed, unsure whether he was glad to see the man or not. This was a rather less ominous meeting than their first, which was not saying much, but he had been in York such a short time that he was a little glad for any familiar face he encountered.

“Pardon?”

Segundus realised what he had said, and felt his face flush. “It… Well… You see, when we met, you just seemed to have come right out of a Brontë novel, striding about the moors and all, and it seems it's what I've decided to call you.” He raised his shoulder, a movement so slight it could barely be called a shrug.

A strange expression crossed Heathcliff’s face, but it was there and gone so quickly that Segundus couldn’t tell if it was a smile or a frown. He let out a short, not necessarily friendly, laugh and continued to stare at Segundus as if he expected him to say something else.

“I don’t think that book is worth the price,” Segundus said, for lack of his brain supplying anything else. He picked the book up and flicked through the pages, more for something to do with his hands than anything else. “The only known copy was lost with Hurtfew in 1817, and every copy that’s appeared since has been wildly different to all the others. I had a quick look through and it looks like a copy of the 1987 run in a different cover.”

Heathcliff’s expression changed to one of interest, and he slouched forward against the counter in a way that seemed casual, but that Segundus found a little intimidating. His hair fell over his shoulder, screening his face from the front of the shop.

“I think I owe you an apology,” he said, and Segundus was so surprised that he had to ask him to repeat himself. “I took you for a tourist. You’re clearly more than that.”

“Well,” Segundus said, feeling the colour climbing his cheeks again as Heathcliff’s gaze stayed on him, intent and penetrating. “I studied magic, but obviously it’s not done much good.” He shrugged and gestured at the bookshop around them with a tight smile.

“Still, you know what you’re about.” Heathcliff turned a sideways smile on him. “I don’t know many folk who’d argue with their boss’s pricings, but here you are. I’ll pay it, to save you the sack. I know what I’m about, as much as you it seems.” There was something in the crease of his eyes that told Segundus that he was now in on this man’s joke, and the rest of the world was the butt of it. Segundus couldn’t help but return it, a little.

“Why do you want a useless book?” He asked, taking his money and giving him the change.

“To compare it with my other useless books,” Heathcliff said, his tone serious, although Segundus wasn’t so sure about his eyes. “See if the scraps of them can make anything worthwhile together.”

Segundus was aware of how stupid the grin that had broken out on his face looked, but Heathcliff said nothing about it, just held his gaze with his own unreadable smile while he picked up his book and slipped it into his pocket. He knocked once on the top of the counter and stepped away. Segundus still didn’t know what to say.

“And it’s John, by the way,” Heathcliff said, looking back over his shoulder. “Brontë country’s further west.”

The bell tinkled, and Segundus was left with all his new information buzzing around his head. It was only a pointed cough that drew his gaze away from the door and to the cross-looking woman standing in front of him. She had a toddler perched on one hip, and pushed a small stack of books towards him with her free hand, glaring at him all the while.

“Oh! I’m sorry, let me…” He rushed through the transaction and, making sure there was nobody else waiting, followed her to the door and stuck his head out, but the snickleway was empty save for the woman and her child.

The next day, the manager approached him while he was having his lunch. In the past, this kind of situation had never boded well for him, so he set his sandwich down and took a sip of his tea before the disappointment could begin.

Mr Burntwood had, it seemed, been talking to a friend about his new employee. This friend knew that Segundus had studied magic, very keenly in fact, and knew a great deal about it. There were always new magic books and old magic books coming into the shop, and Mr Burntwood had no idea of the value of one compared to another. He had as much interest in magic as Segundus did in football, he said with a wry smile. In short, he asked Segundus if he would make a list of all the magical books in the shop and price them accordingly.

Segundus said that he would, of course he would, but it might be necessary for him to take some of them home to read. It was so difficult to tell the difference between genuine articles and forgeries without looking more closely, sometimes, and that was difficult in the shop.

That would be no problem at all, Mr Burntwood told him, rising to his feet. Segundus could take all the time he needed. Just as Burntwood reached the door, Segundus turned to ask who had told him.

“Oh, just a fella I know in passing,” Burntwood answered. “He does some work for the Society, I think.” And then he was gone, making his way carefully down the treacherous stairs.

Mr Honeyfoot was a better friend than he knew, Segundus thought as he finished his sandwich.


	5. Chapter 5

When the third Wednesday of March rolled around, Segundus found himself following Mr Honeyfoot up the dark, narrow stairs of the Olde Starre Inne. His pulse was a wild thing at his wrists, his skin itching with his disbelief at being in this fabled place.

Several round tables were laid out in the room with a dozen or so places set at each, and a long table along a dais at the far end of the room. The layout of the tables made him feel as if he were at a wedding. He thought of other ways the room could be laid out, and imagined the room as it would have been a hundred, two hundred years ago: dark wood illuminated by candles, the large fireplace giving extra light and warmth. For a moment he could almost smell the wood smoke and hear the clunk of pewter tankards against heavy wood tables.

Segundus sat with Mr Honeyfoot on his right and a Ms Redruth (whose first name he hadn’t quite caught and was now a little embarrassed to ask, as they had been discussing the effects of rowan trees on the abilities of magicians for the last forty-five minutes) on his left, and looked around the room. It filled up steadily, and lastly the committee came out to sit at the long table at the end of the room. When everyone was seated the food was served and the wine was poured, and everyone settled into comfortable small-talk, as if they were saving larger topics for the meeting itself. The atmosphere was as far from the academic orderliness of last month’s public lecture as he could imagine.

The main reading was taken by a Mr Briars - a small, ancient looking man whose large beak of a nose was evened out by his complete lack of a chin - who had written a paper on the proper procedure of Fey Relations and whose main argument seemed to consist of contradicting everything the current Ambassador to Faerie had ever said. Briars’ presentation lasted almost a full hour, during which Segundus jotted down two pages of notes mainly consisting of things he didn’t agree with, and then the questions and debate lasted for another. Segundus was never able to raise his voice above the rabble (magicians were, of course, very famous for their bickering, and these magicians knew each other well enough for the bickering to become rather personal), and after the meeting he trailed behind Honeyfoot down the stairs feeling deflated. He slipped his notes into his satchel with a sigh. He was a little surprised when George made for a table in the corner of the downstairs bar instead of for the door.

This informal debrief was, Segundus found, the most enjoyable part of the evening. A small group of George’s friends and acquaintances gathered around, pulling tables together and borrowing chairs from the other side of the pub, to discuss the lecture with much more good humour than they had upstairs. Segundus sat, again, with Ms Redruth and George on either side of him, and voiced the opinions he hadn’t been able to make heard upstairs.

“Quite right!” The group around him chorused, as a second round of drinks appeared. “Oh, absolutely! You should join as a proper member and write an article for the newsletter!”

The night wore on, and the disappointment that had weighed on him in the odd formal space upstairs lifted from him. He took his notes out from his bag and added to them, pointed out parts to Ms Redruth (Charlie, it turned out), listened to the others’ opinions. It was the debate he had been waiting for. Even as the numbers in the group dwindled, as chairs were returned to their rightful places, he didn’t feel quite ready to leave. George was the last to go, and as he stood he asked if Segundus was sure he would be alright on his own. He assured his friend that he would. He was just going to finish his notes and his beer, and then it was only a five minute walk home for him through the snickets.

He sat engrossed in his notes for about half an hour before he was disturbed.

“Mind if I sit?” The voice made him jump. The corner of the pub he was in was quiet (certainly quieter now than it had been an hour ago), but he still hadn't heard the man approach. He looked up and saw Heathcliff – _John_ , he reminded himself –  standing by the table, pint glass in hand, looking down at him with that curious expression of his.

Segundus had a peculiar moment, looking up at him. The electric lights of the pub seemed momentarily replaced by the flickering of candlelight, Heathcliff’s leather jacket replaced by something longer and more old-fashioned. He blinked and the impression was gone; the light once more came from the bulbs in the walls, and the man in front of him was dressed in nothing stranger than a worn leather jacket and jeans.

“Oh, of course!” He waved Heathcliff to the chair across from him, made a few last scribbles in his notebook, and closed it. A week ago he wouldn’t have given the same answer, but their brief conversation in the shop had softened Segundus’ first impression of the man. Nothing now seemed so natural as for the two of them to sit together in this dim corner on a Wednesday night.

“You have an advantage over me,” Heathcliff said as he sat, fixing his gaze on Segundus. “You know my name, but I don't know yours. I can't call you City Boy forever, particularly if we keep meeting like this.”

Segundus felt himself colour, and started fidgeting with the loose thread at the cuff of his jumper. “I'm John, too,” he said, hoping it would be enough.

“John Too?” Heathcliff laughed. “That’s an odd name.” Segundus fixed him with the most unimpressed look he could muster at that moment, but he found he was always disappointed by the reactions he got to his unimpressed looks and this time was no different. “Come on now, what's your real name?”

“You won't believe me,” Segundus said, sighing, because they never did, not magicians, and he knew this man was a magician, he could feel it on him like the wind. He remembered George’s disbelief the first time he had told him his name; only this evening he had had to show Charlie his passport before she would take his word for it.

“Try me.”

“John Segundus.”

If Heathcliff smirked a little, if his eyebrows crept disbelievingly up his face, then Segundus did not see it. Maybe his face had already been arranged like that so he wouldn't have noticed. All he was aware of was a change in the intensity of his eyes.

“Well,” he said, leaning back. He stretched his legs out under the table, nudging Segundus’ foot in the process and resting his arm on the back of the chair. “You may not be in the right part of the county for the Brontës, but you're certainly in the right place for that.”

Segundus sighed and rolled his eyes. “You don't believe me. I knew you wouldn't. Look,” he said, rummaging in his bag. “I've got my passport here, I can show you if you don-”

Heathcliff cut him off with a laugh, with a hand reached across the table to still his arm. “Don't bother,” he said, and when Segundus looked up at him there was something a little kinder in his eyes. “I don't go around IDing random blokes with funny names; I'd get even more of a reputation for myself. I believe you.”

“Good,” Segundus said, and let his tension go in a breath. “And what _is_ your reputation, John? Who should I make my enquiries about?”

At this, Heathcliff gave him a twisted smile, but there was something self-deprecating about it this time. “I believed you, now I hope you'll believe me.” Segundus gave him a nod. He knew, somehow, that he trusted this man; his blood was whispering it in his ears. “John Childermass, at your service.”

He made as good a mocking bow as he could sitting down, and reached his hand out to shake Segundus’. Segundus couldn't help the laugh that broke free from his throat, but he reached back across and shook his hand. When he looked back at Childermass, it was to see a toothy grin that he was sure he was mirroring.

“Are you any relation?” Childermass asked when their laughter had died down. He took a deep drink of his beer, keeping his eyes on Segundus all the while.

“Oh, distantly,” Segundus answered, waving his hand in dismissal. “Fourth cousin thrice removed or some such. My uncle went through a bit of a genealogy craze. Hoped he’d be related to William Buckland, but was disappointed.” He took a drink of his own beer and looked back at Childermass. “What about you?”

He lifted one shoulder in an uneven shrug. “I don't rightly know.” He looked at Segundus with wicked eyes. “There's not much paperwork in my family.”

“Oh,” Segundus said, and took another drink, his last mouthful.

“Another?” Childermass asked, tilting his head to Segundus’ empty glass.

Segundus shook his head. “No, thank you,” he said, because he for one would then be on his fourth (when two was generally his limit - after that he found he got a little too chatty), and he really couldn't excuse it in his budget, which was growing tight.

“Go on,” Childermass said. Then, as if reading Segundus’ mind, “My treat. From one absurd throwback to another.”

Segundus said, “Okay, thank you,” because he felt warm and comfortable here, at this corner table with this man who looked like a thug but who seemed anything but, who seemed to smell like pipe smoke even though he had never seen him with even a cigarette. He got that same feeling he had felt his first morning in York as he had walked along the Shambles and explored the snickleways and the river, like something was clicking into place, like he knew where his feet were taking him. Then again, he thought, that might just have been the beer.

“What brings you here then, City Boy?” Childermass asked as he slid another glass over the table and slid himself into the chair. “Or is that a stupid question, considering our first meeting?”

“I came to see Professor Fforde’s lecture to the Society.” He took a drink, licked his lips, and looked back up at Childermass. “I decided I might as well try to visit Starecross while I was here, tick one thing off the list, you know?”

“You didn't get in?” Childermass asked it with a wry smile and no inflection, as if he knew it would have been unlikely.

“For the second time, no.” Segundus sighed and studied his glass, his lips pressing into a thin line. It shouldn't still hurt, but it did. “I applied there when I was leaving school, but they turned me down. I got into Oxford, but I couldn't get into Starecross.” He snorted a laugh and shook his head. When he looked up, Childermass was giving him a strange sort of smile. “They probably saw my name and thought the application was a joke. I shouldn't take it so personally.” He took another drink. “What's it like?”

“Starecross?” He snorted. “I wouldn't know, I think I've got as close as you have.”

“Oh, but you were coming from there, when…”

“Aye, but not from the main building. There's a friend of mine, Hannah, works as a cleaner there and lives in the village. I was visiting her.” Segundus nodded and drew patterns in the spilt beer on the table. “That lecture was a month ago,” Childermass said, leaning forward on his elbows. Segundus glanced up to see that curious look levelled at him again, as if Childermass could get the answer to whatever question he wished merely by staring his subject out.

“I know,” he said, and didn't look away. He wasn't going to be intimidated into answering a question which hadn't even been asked. Childermass seemed to realise this; he snorted a little as he sat back. They sat in silence for a few more minutes, the bustle of other people’s conversations rising around them and a sly smile rising up one side of Childermass’ face

“So what keeps you here?” He asked eventually, with a hint of satisfaction in his voice, as if Segundus had passed some kind of test.

“I like York,” Segundus said, and looked out across the pub towards the window. “It…” He trailed off. For some reason, he felt a little ridiculous giving this man the same reason he had given Mrs Pleasance: that nowhere had ever felt so much like home to him. “There was nothing keeping me where I was. I thought I should follow my heart for once.”

“It's not many folk whose hearts lead them here.”

Another vision came over him, briefly. Childermass seemed suddenly closer, closer than the table should allow, his eyes older but no less intense, the flame of a candle reflected in them. Again, he blinked and Childermass was stretched back in his chair, looking at him curiously.

“Why are you here?” He asked, crossing his arms to hide his suddenly trembling hands.

Childermass took another minute to answer, although Segundus could see that he already had it ready on his tongue. “I was born here. I've travelled, but my feet always bring me back.”

“That's not what I meant,” Segundus said, and felt himself smile. “You know that.”

“Aye,” Childermass agreed, but offered nothing more than a smug tug of his mouth. Oddly, Segundus found he didn't mind this, and laughed. Childermass gave his own low chuckle and scratched at his rough cheek with his thumb.

Then Childermass asked what he had thought of the lecture, and they fell into a discussion of Professor Fforde’s work. It was a conversation he had had numerous times - with George, Mr Thorpe, other members of the Society - but he enjoyed none of them as much as he did this debate with Childermass. Honeyfoot was the one he had spent the most time with - had come to regard as his closest friend, in fact - but he was often too quick to agree with what Segundus said. He was a sweet man, and good company, but Childermass shot back at him. He brought up points and angles Segundus hadn’t considered. He made Segundus think about things in a way he hadn’t in years, made talking about magic difficult again, and it felt as though he had been lying in bed for months and was just beginning to stretch his wasted muscles. More than once Segundus found himself laughing in delight and saying “I don’t know!” as Childermass tapped the table with a finger and asked a pertinent question no one else seemed to have thought of.

Magicians were infamous for their love of arguing for the sake of argument. With Childermass it wasn’t like that: he held his own opinions strongly, put them forward without reluctance, but was more than willing to listen to Segundus’ ideas and let himself be swayed by them, if they proved sensible.

The barmaid had rung last orders and had begun pointedly clearing the tables by the time they left. Segundus had turned down a fifth beer - more firmly, this time - and was glad of it when he got to his feet and felt the room sway around him. A hand came to his arm to steady him, the warmth of it seeping through his jumper. He had, he realised, not taken the wine he had had with dinner into account.

“Easy, now,” Childermass said, smiling. “Let me walk you home.”

“That’s not necessary, but thank you,” Segundus replied, and promptly missed the step down into the street. The air hit him and he felt like he was floating, even though he had only saved himself from hitting the ground by grabbing at Childermass’ jacket.

“Come on, you lummox.” It was a sigh. “Where are you staying?”

“Mrs Pleasance’s, at Lady Peckett’s Yard.” He detached himself from Childermass and took a couple of steps, feeling a little steadier with each breath. “I’m fine, really. I just don’t usually drink so much on a Wednesday evening.”

“I’m sure the day of the week’s everything to do with it.” This time Segundus was sure that he was the butt of the joke in Childermass’ smile. “Come on, I’ll see you home.” Segundus opened his mouth to object, but Childermass didn’t let him start. “There’re sinister characters around just waiting to prey on southern city boys too deep in their cups.”

“Are there, indeed?” Segundus asked, and turned a smile that felt quite daring on Childermass, who just gave a heavy sigh, accented nicely by a roll of his eyes, and ushered Segundus down Coffee Yard.

The snickelway was narrow, and he often felt Childermass’ shoulder bump against his as they walked, but it soon widened out into Swinegate. Segundus wasn’t aware of much of the journey, not even passing St Samson’s, and was surprised when Childermass stopped them at the entrance to the Yard.

“Thank you,” he said, stepping into the snicket. “I’m sorry about…” He waved himself up and down with a self-effacing laugh, and looked up at Childermass. “Can we meet again?” He asked, before his courage ran out. “It was a nice change to speak to someone...”

“Someone as stubborn as you?” Childermass finished, but kindly.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Segundus laughed, feeling his head spin a little. “I can… let me give you my number. Well, Mrs Pleasance’s number, but she’s assured me it’s alright for friends to phone as long as it isn’t in the middle of the night. Which is reasonable, of course…” he continued rambling as he fished out his pen and notebook from his bag and jotted down the number, wishing he could get his mouth to shut up. He was aware of Childermass watching him, his shoulder propped against the wall, ankles crossed and an eyebrow raised. “There you are,” he said, handing him the piece of paper torn from the back of his notebook. “Of course, you don’t have to feel obliged, if you’d rather not. I’d prefer it if you were blunt than polite-”

“I’d like to,” Childermass interrupted. “I will. And politeness isn’t something I’ve ever been accused of, before you start on about that.”

“Oh,” Segundus said, and he felt a flush rise in his cheeks. “Good.”

“And you can reassure Mrs Pleasance that I won’t call in the middle of the night.” That sly smile was on his face again, creeping up the left hand side. “Goodnight, John.”

“Yes, Goodnight.”

Neither of them moved for a moment, and in that moment Segundus’ body took the decision for him to step forward. He found himself with his lips pressed to Childermass’ cheek with no knowledge of how he had got there. It had been automatic, perfectly placed, the differences in their heights accounted for instantly, and he’d had no intention of doing it.

He pulled back sharply and looked at Childermass who, for the first time since Segundus had met him, looked something approaching surprised. Slowly, he raised his hand to the spot on his cheek where Segundus’ lips had been a moment before, staring at him all the while.

“Erm, well,” Segundus stuttered, backing away. “Goodnight, then.” He wasn’t sure if he had imagined the tiny quirk at the corner of Childermass’ mouth, but he didn’t want to hang around to find out. He walked down the snicket as quickly as he could until he reached Mrs Pleasance’s door. Just before he stepped in, he chanced a look towards the end of the alley. Childermass was gone.

The house was dark, and he walked into the hall table in his haste to get upstairs. The light beneath Mrs Pleasance’s bedroom door came on, and he cringed at himself as he had to call, “It’s only me, Mrs Pleasance! Sorry I’m so late.”

“Oh, no bother, dear,” she replied. “As long as you had a nice time.” The light clicked off, and Segundus went upstairs and collapsed on his bed fully clothed, cursing into his pillow until he fell asleep.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

Two weeks passed, and Segundus neither saw Childermass nor heard from him.

At first he cursed himself and his own stupidity – he shouldn’t have had that last beer, shouldn’t have read things into Childermass’ words and actions that had clearly been imagined. He hadn’t meant to kiss him, but everything leading up to that had felt so _right_. It was as if, in that one moment of quiet, some instinct had kicked in and taken over. Segundus was disquieted by it. He hadn’t often experienced _clicking_ with someone, although he had heard others talking of it. He supposed he had _clicked_ with George, but sitting in the pub with Childermass had been something else entirely.

Maybe he was just lonely, he thought, and dismissed it immediately. He had been lonely often enough, and had never resorted to kissing near-strangers as a result. The longer time went on with no word from Childermass, the more bereft he felt. He had never found someone he had fallen in with so comfortably and easily, and he had ruined it in a moment of tipsy regret.

It played in the back of his mind: the _what-if_ s and the _why_ s of it. When he caught himself at this, he would shake his head and tell himself to concentrate on his work, to try to remember why exactly he had scribbled those symbols in his notebook and written _bell-heather_ beside them. It crept up on him when he was trying to sleep, until he curled around himself with the embarrassment of it, hiding his head under the covers until he no longer saw Childermass’ startled face.

He tried not to let himself linger on it for long: he had his work to do, his reading in the evenings, and the paper he had started writing for the Society. His membership hadn’t been accepted yet, but George had assured him it was a certain thing, and he had decided it would look best to be prompt with his contributions.

The first Saturday of April brought with it the weekly surge of customers. By half past eleven, Segundus had been rushing about so much, trying to find such-and-such a book for one customer, then explaining to another that he was sorry, someone else had just bought their only copy of _that_ book, that he was tempted to hide behind the counter when he heard the bell above the door tinkle during his first moment of quiet since opening at half past eight. Instead, he took a deep breath and looked up, fixing his Customer Service Smile in place. When he realised who he was looking at, it grew wider and more genuine, until he remembered the events of that Wednesday night and immediately felt himself go red.

“I thought Burntwood said Saturdays were busy,” Childermass drawled, looking around the now empty shop. Segundus felt annoyance burn up the remains of his embarrassment.

“If you had been here even three min-” He cut himself off when he saw the look on Childermass’ face and realised he was being teased. He sighed and raised an eyebrow at Childermass. “How can I help you?” He asked, hoping that Childermass was only in for business, hoping it was for more than that.

“Oh,” Childermass said, leaning against the counter with his elbow. “There are a number of things.” He eyed Segundus curiously. “But right now I was wondering what your plans are for lunch.”

“I get an hour off at one,” he answered, a little annoyed at himself for being so quick with his reply.

“There’s a café round the corner. I’d like to take you, if you’re agreeable.” There was, for once, no hint of irony or sarcasm on Childermass’ face. Segundus regarded him a little longer, trying to detect any practical joke that might be lurking there.

“That…” Segundus thought for a moment, thinking how much money he had on him. He should be able to spare a fiver for lunch, he hoped. The sandwich he had brought with him would just as easily serve for his dinner. “That would be nice.”

“Great,” Childermass said, rapping the counter with his knuckles. “I’ll come back then.” And then he was gone, the bell tolling above his head as Segundus watched his dark shape disappear behind the door. His heart beating hard in his chest, he was glad that _pretend it never happened_ was the way they seemed to be dealing with it for now.

It was twenty past one by the time Segundus actually managed to get away. He left the shop still pulling his jacket on, and spotted Childermass a little way up the street talking to a girl. She was laughing at something he had just said, and was quite beautiful. Childermass saw him and turned, saying something else to the girl and placing a hand on her shoulder. Something tightened in Segundus’ chest, and he told himself not to be so ridiculous.

“I’m so sorry I’m late, I got caught up with Mrs Braithwaite, and she wouldn’t be happy until I showed her every edition of _Winnie the Pooh_ we had,” Segundus said as he approached. He smiled and nodded at the girl, and she gave him a knowing smile in return. He felt his cheeks heat and looked back to Childermass.

“I’d better get back to work, John,” she said to Childermass, and then looked back to Segundus. “Nice to meet you,” she said with a small smile, and wandered off.

“Dido,” Childermass explained, and turned to walk in the other direction, so clearly sure that Segundus would follow him that he didn’t spare a backwards glance.

“She’s very pretty,” Segundus said, feeling something tighten in his throat. “Is she… are you…?”

“No,” Childermass said, and laughed. “No, there’s no danger of that.”

They reached their destination, and Childermass held the door open for him. A waitress called out a cheery “Hullo, John!” as Childermass headed straight for a table in the corner. He sat with his back against the wall, and Segundus slid in across from him.

“I’d like to apologise,” said Segundus, once the waitress had given them menus and left them to make their choices. They had sat in silence for a moment too long and his palms were getting itchy, although Childermass looked relaxed as ever. “For last time. I was a little drunk-”

“A little?” Childermass’ eyes gleamed, the corners of them creasing in amusement.

“Alright, I was _very_ drunk, and I hope I didn’t offend you in any way.” He looked down at his hands, which were fidgeting with the laminated sheet of a menu. “I enjoyed talking to you, and if there’s anything I can do to-”

“If you had offended me,” Childermass interrupted, leaning forwards on his elbows, “do you think I would have invited you out for lunch?”

“I, ah, I suppose not.” He felt the colour rise to his cheeks, but braved a glance up at Childermass anyway. He had been half afraid that this would be a ruse to humiliate him, although looking at Childermass now he wondered why he had worried. “I thought I must have scared you off, when I didn’t see you for weeks.”

“I work away a bit,” Childermass said with a shrug. “Just got back yesterday.”

“And what is it you do?” Something private and amused twisted Childermass’ mouth and danced in his eyes at the question.

“Oh,” he said, “This and that.”

Childermass’ smile stretched into a grin, and he leaned back in his chair in quiet, secret satisfaction. The waitress came over then, pulling Childermass’ attention away to familiar chatting, gossip about people Segundus didn’t know. Segundus ordered a cheese toastie and some soup, and Childermass told her that he would have the same.

“I had a question for you, John Segundus,” Childermass said, then took a bite of his lunch so that Segundus had to wait for him to finish chewing before hearing the rest. “What do you think of the _Instructions_?”

“Belasis?” Segundus asked, then sighed. “It’s worthless. Ten pages in and it’s suddenly a recipe book. How useful you find that would depend entirely on how much you like cabbage. I suppose it’s historically interesting from that point of view: it really is amazing how many different uses the Victorians had for cabbage.” He took another bite of his lunch while Childermass laughed. Then a thought occurred to him. “How do _you_ know about it?”

“Burntwood keeps me updated with these things, knows I’ve got an interest in them.”

“You know Burntwood?” Segundus asked in surprise. Childermass smiled enigmatically.

“I know everyone,” he said in a low voice, then laughed shortly. “He’s been in contact less since he found out about you, though.” He took a bite of his own lunch and looked back at Segundus as he swallowed. “I hope you don’t mind that I mentioned that to him. Seemed a shame to let your interests go to waste like that.”

“That was you?” Segundus asked, feeling his face flush. Childermass gave him a look that seemed to say _Who else would you expect?_ as he chewed on his toastie. “I thought it was George Honeyfoot; Burntwood only said it was a friend who had something to do with the Society.”

“Well,” Childermass said with a snort. “That’s maybe putting it a bit strongly. I run some errands for them every now and then, when Foxcastle can’t be arsed driving to Manchester.” Segundus got the distinct impression that Childermass didn’t hold the Society in much esteem. It made his spine straighten a little, to know his opinion was held in more regard by this man than a whole group of more esteemed scholars.

“And what else do you do?” Segundus asked. “I don’t imagine you make much of a living running errands.”

Childermass shrugged. “I do some commissions, that’s usually what takes me away. In fact,” he added, leaning closer, “that was what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh?” Segundus was surprised, and hoped he wouldn’t embarrass himself.

“I’ve had a lady ask me about plants and their communication,” Childermass explained. “I can’t say why, exactly, but I had a feeling that it’s something you might know something about.”

“What did she want to know?”

“I think she wants some guard dog-roses."

“Are you free on Tuesday?” Ideas and theories were already flying through Segundus’ mind. Childermass nodded, and walked Segundus back to the shop when they had finished their lunch. Segundus set back to work with a lighter head and heart than he had felt in weeks.

*

On Tuesday morning, Segundus packed his satchel with the books he thought he might need and some magical tools, and left Mrs Pleasance’s house at nine. Childermass was waiting for him on the road at the end of the Yard.

“Come on, then,” he said, and tossed Segundus a helmet.

“What?” Segundus scrambled to catch it.

“Stick it on, we’ve not got all day.” Segundus frowned at the helmet and looked back at Childermass. He was leaning against a large, ugly motorbike and was putting his own helmet on. Childermass caught him looking, and (Segundus thought, though it was hard to tell beneath the helmet) raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t think the outfit was just for effect, did you?” There was humour in his voice, and Segundus couldn’t help but smile.

“I did, actually.” He handed his helmet back to Childermass for a moment and secured his satchel across his chest, then took it back and pulled it on. It was not comfortable, and made his already rapid pulse feel louder in his ears. He swallowed and hoped the helmet hid the terror he had no doubt was obvious on his face. “I thought ‘brooding outsider’ was your whole look,” he said, trying for levity but falling short of disguising the tremor in his voice.

Childermass barked a laugh and swung his leg over the bike. He started it, the machine roaring into life beneath him, and motioned for Segundus to climb on behind him. He settled himself behind Childermass and felt the thrum of the engine below him. He squeezed his eyes shut as the bike lurched forward and stopped immediately, and heard Childermass shout “Hang on!” over his shoulder.

He put his hands on Childermass’ shoulders and clung on, but felt Childermass’ sigh. He thought he might have grumbled something, too, but he couldn’t hear it between their helmets and the running engine. Childermass took hold of Segundus’ hands and, in a very no-nonsense fashion, wrapped them tightly around his waist. He waited a moment, as if to see if Segundus would let go again, before pulling away from the pavement.

The journey seemed to take hours, with his eyes squeezed shut and his face pressed to Childermass’ back as well as the helmet would allow. Every time they turned a corner, Segundus was convinced the bike would topple and they would both be killed, which meant that he was fairly sure he was on the verge of cracking Childermass’ ribs on every bend. Absurdly, his mind decided to play _And if a double-decker bus crashes in to us_ on repeat, which he found did not help. He tried to think of the garden they were heading to instead.

Mercifully, the journey did eventually end. The bike stopped, the engine turned off, and Segundus opened his eyes one at a time. He felt Childermass shift in his arms, and quickly let go of him to fumble at the buckle under his chin. When he looked up, Childermass was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t read, but feared was hiding hysterical laughter.

Segundus got off the bike and cleared his throat. Childermass took the helmet from him – he was definitely laughing at him now, the _arse_ – and left it on the seat. Unable to look at him anymore, Segundus glanced around. They were by the side of the road in what looked like a village: all grassy verges and charming red-brick cottages. Across the road from the imposing grey church was what looked like a village green, which held what must have been a maypole, red and blue stripes swirling up the white pole. The motorbike was already drawing a disapproving look from an elderly man pushing a pram through the green.

“If you’re done?” Childermass sighed, and led the way to an impressively sized house. Segundus had to scurry to keep up with his long stride. A short flagstone path cut through the small front garden to the door. Although small, the garden was crowded on both sides of the path by lavender and foxgloves, vervain and lilac trees. Childermass stepped into the porch and rang the doorbell while Segundus looked around him.

“Oh, Mr Childermass! Back so soon!” A woman’s voice exclaimed, and Segundus turned back to face the door, which now framed a woman in the early years of retirement. Her hair was neatly styled, and pearls shone at her ears and neck.

“Mrs Howarth,” Childermass nodded and stood to the side. “This is John Segundus, my colleague. He’s agreed to give me a hand with your request.”

“Ma’am,” Segundus smiled and nodded to her, and she ushered them both inside.

The house was as neat and proper as the woman herself, the living room light with the late morning sun, filled with a floral suite and a couple of display cabinets filled with trinkets. A curtain was drawn over the mirror above the fireplace. Segundus caught Childermass’ eye immediately after noticing this, and he was given a short shake of the head. Mrs Howarth came back with a pot of tea and some cups on a tray.

“Childermass has told me a little of your request,” Segundus said, once they had all settled with their cups and saucers. “But I feel it would be best to hear it directly from you. What exactly is it you want done?”

Mrs Howarth took a deep breath and looked down at her cup. “What I want most of all is to feel more secure in my home.” She looked Segundus straight in the eye, and he had to force himself not to look away at the vulnerability in her face. “You see, Mr Segundus, my husband died just over a year ago, and three months after I was the victim of an attempted burglary.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Segundus said, reaching out to touch the back of her hand.

“Oh, don’t be, nothing to be done now.” She smiled at him sadly. “The men didn’t take anything except my sense of security. The house is so big, but we were happy here for so many years that I can’t bear to move. Mr Childermass suggested we might do something with the garden.” She turned to Childermass. “I have already planted the vervain you recommended for the front.”

“So I noticed,” said Childermass. “Mrs Howarth has been a keen gardener her whole life,” Childermass explained to Segundus, after a nod from her. “There is a bond between her and the plants that I felt could be built on, whether for physical protection or just an early warning system.”

“Yes, I see.” Segundus pressed his lips together as he thought.

“We decided last time to focus on the back garden,” Mrs Howarth said. From the corner of his eye, Segundus saw Childermass nod encouragingly. “That was where the break-in happened, and the plants there are larger and more established.”

“Can I see it?” He asked, and she nodded and led them through to the back.

The back garden was enormous. The far end was bordered by a hawthorn hedge, thick with leaves and budding flowers. There were more lilac trees, as well as some rowans, and a wisteria climbing up a frame beside the herb border. Two areas of lawn were divided by a flagstone path leading down to a small summerhouse, and the borders of each were a riot of flowers of every colour. It was beyond Segundus to name them all. Lavender and hydrangea bushes sprawled over the path in places, and against the house were two large rosebushes winding up trellis, one of which was in bloom with new pale pink flowers, the other in bud. Segundus didn’t look at those for long; he had never been fond of roses, although he appreciated their uses.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, and Mrs Howarth seemed pleased, although she left them a moment later. Childermass strode down to the hawthorn and, starting from the bottom, pointed out the plants of interest he had noticed at his last visit as Segundus walked beside him.

“The hawthorn could be weaponised, with the thorns, but it’s so far from the house…” Segundus sighed and trailed off.

“It’s a likely entry point, we could set it up as a guardian.”

“Of course! I’m sure there’s something of that kind in Slingsby. He used it on a quince tree-”

“Yes! He enchanted the leaves to sing whenever someone attempted to steal the fruit.”

“Now, it’s not quite the same, and would be useless in the winter… Unless we could somehow get it to communicate with that spruce through their branches or roots?”

They continued the conversation as they walked around the garden. Segundus suggested using the attributes of the likes of the pansies – plants that had distinctive faces, or even just ears or eyes – to act as guards, while the more substantial shrubs could become more physical barriers. Segundus took notes as they walked, sketched the relative positions of the different plants to each other and the house. He and Childermass talked over one another, not interrupting but overlapping each other, picking up and leaving off points for the other to run with. It was as if they were dancing, stepping neatly around each other with ideas, and Segundus felt light with it, wandering around a beautiful garden on a warm spring day.

As they discussed how the plants would differentiate between guests and invaders (Mrs Howarth had three grandchildren, and did not seem keen on any of them being hoisted into the air by the wisteria), they passed through a part of the garden Segundus hadn’t seen before. In the corner opposite the summer house was a large rosebush. Most of the flowers were in bud, but one had blossomed near the top. A single rose at his eye level, ivory white petals outlined in blood red. His vision swam and his stomach churned at the sight of it, and from far away he heard a scream.

_A house rendered unnavigable, a splash of red on a white shirt, a woman screaming in rage, the tinkling of bells, a man he had never seen stepping away from his outstretched hand_

“Oh, here he is. Mr Segundus, are you alright? You’ve given us quite the fright!”

Segundus was surprised to find himself blinking up at the pale blue sky, Mrs Howarth and Childermass both leaning over him with concern written very differently on each of their faces. He realised that he was lying on the soft grass of the lawn, and felt its dampness seeping through his shirt and trousers. He sat up slowly and rubbed at his temple, which still held the remnants of a headache he could tell would linger for the rest of the day.

“John?” Childermass asked, and Segundus turned to look at him.

“Oh, I’m alright. I don’t know what…” He looked around, and caught sight of the red and white rose. The pain lanced out from his temple as if he had been hit, but he steadied himself. It was a moment before he realised he was clutching for dear life to Childermass’ arm.

“Where did you get that rose?” Childermass asked Mrs Howarth, and she blinked down at him in surprise.

“Oh, it was here when we moved. I kept it because it’s so beautiful.”

Childermass stood and went to examine the rose, frowning all the while. He ran his hand over it, hovering an inch from contact. His shoulders relaxed, and Segundus felt a breeze that did not ruffle the leaves or his hair, and the sweet, busy fragrance of the garden was overwhelmed briefly with the fresh scent of heather and moor. Segundus closed his eyes and breathed it in, felt the remains of whatever had caused his faint blown away by it.

“There’s no magic surrounding it,” Childermass said, turning to them again. “Not that I can detect, anyway. Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes,” Segundus said, starting to feel a little irritated by the fussing. “I’m fine.” He stood and dusted off his trousers. “I think we should try a test on the pansies. If that works we can think on a larger scale. They’re unlikely to cause too much trouble if something’s not quite right, unlike the wisteria or the roses.”

“Alright.” Childermass nodded, and Segundus was glad that he didn’t push the issue. Mrs Howarth still looked a little uncertain, but he gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

“Do you need anything?” She asked. Segundus fished in his bag for his basin, and asked her to fill it with water.

When she brought it back out, he and Childermass were crouched either side of a large pot of pansies which had struck them both as especially vigilant. They had discussed the shape of the spell as they walked, and now Segundus sketched out a final draft. It was a simple spell, a plea to the pansies for their help: a reminder of all the care and attention shown to them by Mrs Howarth, how she so diligently kept the slugs and greenfly away from them, and told them how they could help her in return. Childermass had suggested they add in a skimmer of supplication for extra luck, and they cast it together, hands hovering over the bush in question as they both whispered the words they had come up with, eyes closed in concentration.

The breeze from the moors whirled around them again, fresh and cool and scented with peat and rain. It tingled over Segundus’ skin, seeped into his bones and travelled down his spine until he was buzzing with it. Childermass’ gasp made Segundus open his eyes, pulled something taut inside him.

His dark eyes were wide, looking right into him, burning with something that Segundus couldn’t try to name while they were casting the spell. He kept Childermass’ gaze as they finished and the otherworldly breeze died away. He could almost see the magic wrapping itself around the pansies and sinking into their petals and leaves. Their veins seemed to glow with it for an instant.

For an endless moment, Segundus and Childermass looked at each other. Something had changed, had come to the foreground and could no longer be ignored. The world rushed back in around them before Segundus could grasp hold of it. The bees in the lilac were deafening, the scent of the lavender was overpowering. Childermass coughed and stood, brushing a dandelion seed from his hair, and went to find Mrs Howarth. Segundus took a moment to close his eyes and breathe in, trying to catch a hint of the moor on the wind. He sighed and looked down at the pansies, brushed his fingertip over a petal of the finest purple velvet.

Once they had explained the spell to Mrs Howarth and told her what they expected to happen, she waved them off cheerily. Segundus climbed on the bike behind Childermass again and kept his eyes open on the return journey. Childermass dropped him back at the entrance to Lady Peckett’s Yard with a mumbled thanks, and drove off before Segundus could give him the helmet.

Segundus stood there, gazing dumbly up the road, until a delivery van pulled in front of his line of vision and forced him to shake himself. His headache was tightening around his temples, so he took a cup of tea up to his room and fell asleep before he could drink it.

His dreams were filled with red and white roses, long dark hallways tilting around him, brambles and ivy climbing the walls, once familiar but made strange.


	7. Chapter 7

The quiet periods on Thursday afternoons were Segundus’ favourite times at the shop. Suzanne would take over from him at the counter, and he would weave his way through the narrow, twisting shelves to the very back of the building. There was, hidden on all sides by bookshelves, an alcove just the right size for a small desk and a chair below a small window which seemed to have been placed there purely because the builders couldn’t think of another use for the piece of crown glass that sat in the wall.

He took no small pleasure in settling himself into the chair and putting down the books he was planning to look through on the left hand side of the desk, his notebook in the middle. He would look through the books, make his notes, and once he was finished with a volume he would move it to a pile on his right. He could quite happily sit there from two until six. More than once he had been surprised out of his studies by the lights going off around him as the shop closed.

Officially, he was supposed to be making notes on the relative value of the books for Burntwood, but he often found himself taking notes on chapters of interest to his own studies, Childermass’ words echoing in his mind: _See if the scraps of them can make anything worthwhile together._

This Thursday, however, he was just getting his teeth into a chapter on the magical significance of roses (one which went into some detail about the _colour_ _s_ of roses, which he felt with some certainty had something to do with his reaction at Mrs Howarth’s) when Suzanne popped her head around the corner. He got the feeling she had called his name a few times before he actually heard her, because when he looked around she had the same look on her face as she did whenever Burntwood tried to use the till.

“There’s someone asking for you up front,” she said. “He-” But Childermass was already beside her, looking at Segundus with a complicated expression. Suzanne glanced between them for a moment and, hearing no objection from Segundus, left with a shrug. Before Childermass could say anything, Segundus held up a hand to him and turned back to the book. He had to get it down before the thought was blown from his mind. There was something important about the roses, he felt, although he could not say why; they had been on his mind since Tuesday, hooking their thorns into the deepest parts of him.

Childermass just rested his shoulder against the bookcase in the corner and tilted his chin as he watched Segundus scribble a couple of notes. When Segundus was ready, he laid his pen down and turned to him. He took a breath to apologise, but the expression on Childermass’ face told him it wasn’t necessary. There was something pleased about the tilt of his mouth that made Segundus smile.

“I didn’t realise Burntwood was paying you to keep up with your hobbies,” Childermass said, one eyebrow rising slowly up his forehead.

“They do say that a good job should feel like a hobby.”

“Does this?”

Segundus laughed lightly and sat back in his seat. “Not usually, no.” He looked up at Childermass, appreciating his effortless nonchalance with a little envy. “What can I do for you?”

“You can feel it,” Childermass said, but not before looking around them and lowering his voice. Segundus swallowed. “In the garden, you felt the magic we were doing.”

 “As did you,” Segundus said, and knew it was true. He remembered Childermass’ gasp, the look of surprise on his face, the moment that had passed between the end of the magic and the world rushing back in.

“We need to talk about that,” Childermass said, sliding further into the alcove and perching himself on the edge of Segundus’ desk.

It was normal, Segundus knew, to have some awareness of one’s own magic as one practised. It was _not_ so normal to feel the magic of others, at least not as strongly as Segundus did, as Childermass seemed to. That the two of them had noticed this skill in each other at the same moment was not something that could remain undiscussed.

“I suppose we do.” Segundus blinked up at him. In the close space of the alcove, Childermass seemed to loom out of some other darkness. He had come from a place beyond the bookshelves, where rogues and scoundrels wandered the streets. His hair hung forward, and Segundus caught the warm, sweet scent of pipe smoke. Childermass said nothing, but kept his eyes on Segundus, something strange and intense and familiar burning in the darkness of them. He swallowed, his throat rippling in the shadows.

“I need to leave,” Childermass said, looking away from Segundus finally and up at the small round window above the desk. “This evening. I don’t know how long I’ll be away.” His face seemed cast in moonlight, silver-cool in the distorted light from the crown glass.

“The Society?”

Childermass shook his head and looked back at him; blinked a few times rapidly and jerked his head to the side. “It’s not something I can explain. Not here.” Segundus nodded as if he understood, but he knew that Childermass would always be a mystery, that secrecy was as much a part of him as his skin or his hair. “Will you look in on Mrs Howarth next week?”

“I will.” It heavy lay between them, the knowledge of magic, the knowledge that neither of them were saying everything they wanted to.

“Thank you,” Childermass said, and stood. He rested his hand on Segundus’ shoulder, warm and heavy.

Segundus wasn’t aware that his eyes had closed until he had to open them to look back up at Childermass. He almost said _Anything_ , but stopped himself just in time, unsure where the urge had come from. Instead, he said, “Good luck,” although he knew nothing about Childermass’ trip or if it was even something which required luck. It seemed the right thing to say, nevertheless: Childermass gave him a tight smile and a nod, squeezed his shoulder briefly, and was gone, leaving Segundus alone.

Segundus turned back to his book, but found that the roses couldn’t capture his attention again. With a sigh, he set it aside and picked up the volume beneath: _Translating the Untranslatable:_ _A Century of the King’s Letters_. He started to read.

*

That night, Segundus didn’t so much fall to sleep as slide sideways into it. One moment he was lying in his bed at the top of Mrs Pleasance’s house, the next he was standing in a shining green country, surrounded by enormous trees that seemed to him as ancient as the rocks themselves. Flowers bloomed in every square inch beneath the trees: carnations, bleeding hearts, wild garlic, thousands of daisies, thick carpets of bluebells and snowdrops all blossoming at once, species of plant he had never seen before but somehow knew their names as _kings’-ruin_ and _end-of-days_. He walked – or, perhaps, _moved_ was more the word for it, as he was not conscious of stepping forward though the landscape moved past him anyway – until he came to a hill, long and low, with an opening in the middle.

A man waited outside, his hands clasped before him. There was something not quite human about the brightness of his eyes, the wicked shape of his dark eyebrows.

“Grandfather awaits you,” said the man, and as Segundus drew closer he saw the fine dusting of hair all across the man’s face. He turned and walked into the opening in the hill, and Segundus followed.

_This is a terrible idea_ , he thought, but did not stop himself, although he felt he could exert some control over this dream if he tried.

Inside the hill was a grand house, bright sunlight streaming in through the windows and alighting on a number of glittering objects and people. By this time Segundus was only vaguely surprised by this. His guide took him to a large, ancient-looking throne and bowed as he backed away.

Upon the throne sat a handsome man – definitely a man, this time – who looked down at Segundus with a cool sort of curiosity. A silver crown rested on his dark brow, and his hands curled over the arms of his throne.

“Mr Segundus,” he said, his voice rich and deep in an accent that seemed at once old and novel to Segundus, as if he had heard it before but a long time ago. “I am sorry it has been so long. It has taken time to get this house in order.”

Looking up at this man, hearing his name spoken out loud in his voice, nudged something within Segundus into place. “I’m not dreaming, am I?”

“You are not,” was his answer. “I asked Stonecrop to bring you here, as it has been brought to my attention that we have matters to discuss. I would not hold you against your will, sir, and you are free to leave if you wish.”

“Oh, no,” Segundus said. He looked around at the house and the creatures arranged about it, and now he looked more closely he could see the inhuman touches about their appearances: their light coverings of fur, ranging from midnight black through chestnut brown to a pale fawn and all shades in-between; their long eyebrows with flourishes at the tips; their tails; their long wicked claws, when not hidden in long, old-fashioned gloves. “I’m just confused as to why you would choose me to speak to. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I know you.”

“You did, once. You knew me when I was Stephen Black, although I no longer go by that name.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t-” He stopped himself as something came to him. It was an image, as pale and fleeting as an old polaroid. He saw the man before him, but smaller, somehow, thin and drawn and tired, but the most striking thing was the red and white rose that bloomed in place of his mouth. He felt himself stumble back, hand clutched to his head as nausea and exhaustion hit him like a bus. It was magic, he realised. Although the magic he felt here was fresh and new, there was an undercurrent of malevolence and rage, a stain that had not quite been washed from the floor. He thought he could see the shape of that stain, but it hurt him to focus too closely on it. It was the sharp prick of a thistle, disguised by the softness of its down.

“Bring him a chair,” the man who used to be Stephen Black said to someone Segundus could not see. He had closed his eyes to better focus on his breathing. A moment later he heard the scrape of wood on marble, and a warm hand with nails a little too long came to his arm to guide him down.

“Where am I?” Segundus managed to force the words from his throat, and they came out hoarse and strained. He was starting to get the feeling that he knew the answer, but was afraid to hear it out loud.

“This is Lost-Hope, Mr Segundus.”

“This is Faerie.” He opened his eyes, and through his swimming vision saw the man who was no longer Stephen Black nod once, slowly. One of his court pressed a glass into Segundus’ hand. He eyed it warily, before turning the same look to the creature who had given it to him, and then to the man on the throne.

“You may drink safely here, John Segundus,” the man said. “I have myself been the victim of enchantment, I would not impose it on another. You have my word.” Something in the man’s eyes tightened briefly, then he seemed to shake himself of it and nodded once more to Segundus. The water was clear and cool, and Segundus felt his headache recede a little as he sipped.

“I still don’t understand,” he said. “You said you _used to_ go by Stephen Black, what should I call you now?”

“I am the King of Lost-Hope,” the King said. “I killed the old King, and the throne became mine. It is barbaric, but it is the law of these people.” He gestured to the fairies around them, who were paying little attention to the conversation as they were more intent on admiring each other.

“But why have you brought me here?” Segundus asked.

“Because of the care you took of Lady Pole. I trust you, Mr Segundus, and I have heard things from my neighbours. A change is coming to England.”

“Lady Pole?” Segundus asked. His history lessons came back to him, the furious letters and books he had read talking of fairies and their duplicitous nature, of the untrustworthiness of English magicians. “That… That wasn’t me. You have the wrong man. That was over a hundred years ago.” But another image came to him, a beautiful woman with her head turned determinedly away from him, the rose at her mouth hiding the defiant press of her lips.

The King frowned at him slowly, looking at him closely. “What year is it in England?”

“1996,” Segundus answered. “April,” he added, in case it made a difference.

“Hmm,” said the King, like a man who had been told he had been at a task twenty minutes longer than he had expected and found his tea cold beside him. “I had thought it would be 1825 at the latest. Time passes strangely here, it seems.”

“Indeed,” said Segundus, somewhat at a loss.

“You are still at Starecross?” The King asked, looking less certain of himself now.

“I’ve never been. Well,” Segundus corrected himself with a diffident shrug, “I tried to visit but I couldn’t get in.”

“You must return,” said the King, steely certainty back in his voice as he looked down at Segundus. “He is waiting.”

Segundus opened his mouth, but the hall was retreating around him and he was back in the woods, retracing his steps, his question dissolving on his tongue.

*

When he woke, light was streaming across his face. His dream had left him with a question, one he could not quite form. The memory of it was slipping away from him like smoke, until he could remember nothing but a blooming forest and a handsome, regal face. His feet itched for the moors.

Mrs Pleasance called his name from downstairs, and he pushed himself to sit up. His head ached as though he had been drinking, and as he raised his hand to rub at his eyes he realised he was holding a delicate crystal glass that, when the morning light caught it, seemed to shine the colour of patience. He set it on his bedside table and got dressed.

Downstairs, Mrs Pleasance urged him into a chair and fussed over how pale he looked. She gave him a cup of tea and pushed a plate full of breakfast in front of him. His stomach churned at the sight of it, but he ate a few bites of toast before making his excuses to go to work.

On his way out the door, he noticed an envelope bearing his name on the hall table. He picked it up, ran his thumb over the swooping J and S, and slipped it into his satchel with a smile. The writing was familiar; he knew who it was from at a glance, although as he walked to work he realised that he didn’t remember ever seeing it before.

Work was its usual busy Friday self, and Segundus was glad for it. Having questions to answer and customers to appease kept his mind from wandering to the letter waiting upstairs too often, or to the peculiar feeling his dream had left him with. He was still glad when lunchtime came and he was able to take the letter from his bag and read it through.

_John,_

_I realised I hadn’t given you Mrs Howarth’s details. I don’t think you paid much mind to the journey so I thought you might need her address, which is on the attached paper along with her phone number. I have spoken to her and she says Tuesday is convenient for another visit. Please contact her if it isn’t for you._

_I want to thank you for your help in this, it’s a relief to have someone sensible to discuss these matters with. I don’t know how long I’ll be away, but if you could check in on things every now and then I would appreciate it greatly. As you know, this is a commission job, and I promise you will see your share of the fee._

_Thanks again,_

_John Childermass_

_P.S. We still need to have that chat, Mr Segundus._

Tucking the letter back into his satchel and slipping Mrs Howarth’s details into his notebook, he swallowed the cool remains of his tea and went back to work.

At home, he was called by Mrs Pleasance to help her with the _Purfois Modification_ on her hand mirror, as she had been interrupted in a conversation with her sister by the sound suddenly cutting out.

“When was the last time you had the spell renewed?” He asked as he examined the mirror.

“Bertie was still with us, so it must have been a good ten years ago,” she said, and gave a great sigh. He shot her a smile.

“There you go then,” he said. “You should have it refreshed every five years or so. The magic does tend to wear off, especially if it’s used often.”

He closed his eyes and hovered his hand over the mirror, trying to feel for the fabric of the spell. He caught a strand of it, thin and bright, and followed it until he could feel the weft and warp of the whole thing. Yes, there were the threadbare areas, and patches where it had worn away completely. He murmured the familiar words to himself, felt his own magic spool out from him to fill the spaces, reinforcing the strands already there. It was simple magic, schoolboy stuff really, but it brought a smile to his face to do it, as magic always did.

“Oh, thank you John! You are a life-saver,” Mrs Pleasance said as he handed the mirror back to her. She drew her finger across the surface and a sparkling line appeared, followed swiftly by a face that looked remarkably like her own. “Can you hear me now, Jean?”

“Loud and clear, Hettie!” The woman on the other side of the mirror cried, and both women laughed. Segundus found himself introduced to Jean, and indulged in a few minutes of idle chitchat before excusing himself to his room.

After settling himself at his desk, he pulled out the notes he had been making on the history of the Book of the Raven King, and frowned at the symbols he didn’t remember scribbling in the margins and the words he had written beside them: _Darkness_ and _time_ and _key_ and, off to the side, _S &N_ _?_


	8. Chapter 8

“How is your paper coming along, John?”

Segundus blinked up at George for a moment before asking him to repeat himself. “Sorry,” he said, “I was miles away.”

“Your paper for the Society? Alf told me the committee had accepted your membership, and I know you were working very hard on it. The King’s Letters, wasn’t it?” George smiled at him from his chair. Segundus took a sip of his tea, and looked over at the window as a shriek issued from the garden.

“Oh, yes,” he said, settling back into himself. “I’m just finishing the final draft. I’ll have to let you read it before I submit.”

“I’d be delighted! I-” Honeyfoot was distracted by a shriek and a chorus of feminine laughter from the hall. “Oh, that must be Sarah!”

While Honeyfoot rushed to the hall to greet his daughter, Segundus stayed in his chair in the living room, his thoughts preoccupied with his research. He was surprised at his own choice of subject, the King’s Letters had never held much interest for him before. Of course, he was intrigued to know what they held, but he had never been a linguist and so was reassured that better minds than his were working on the problem of translation.

Since February, though, he had been thinking about it more and more. Part of it, he supposed, was the spark of inspiration that had caught him at Professor Fforde’s lecture, when he had thought his time in York would only be a brief visit. It was the first magic he had heard of in York, and he sometimes felt as though it anchored him in the city. Rather than any paltry attempts at translation he could offer, he had focused his attentions on the history of the Book itself.

It had been fascinating work – he had only delved into the shallowest pools of it previously – but when he had tried to find out what had happened to the Book, his research had ground to a halt. After being discovered in the late 1810s, the man Vinculus had travelled the country with John Childermass to be looked at and sketched. Magical Societies in every major city had records of his visits and their members’ attempts at translations. This had gone on for almost twenty years: York, London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bath, Norwich, even Edinburgh on a couple of occasions. Then, in the 1830s the travelling stopped. The last visit had been to the York Society. Dr Foxcastle had been kind enough to let Segundus look at some papers from around that time, but there was nothing in them to indicate that this last visit was different in any way to the others. After three hours of being studied, Vinculus had gone to his room in the inn and the next morning had been taken back to Starecross Hall, where he seemed in the habit of staying when he was in York.

That was the last mention of anyone seeing the Book of the Raven King. This hadn’t seemed outrageous at the time –  the man must have been getting well into his sixties or seventies by then (no one seemed to be able to agree on his age), and Segundus supposed so much travelling could not have been the most comfortable way to spend one’s old age back then – but the nature of the thing disturbed Segundus for no reason he could name.

There had never been any announcement of illness or death, and although he was aware that a man of Vinculus’ class (there had been several disparaging remarks about his breeding and character in the papers Segundus had seen, and he had a certain reputation for drunkenness) would be little reported on in those days, given Vinculus’ extraordinary circumstances this struck Segundus as unusual. By that time there had been a number of accurate drawings and engravings made of the man’s body, more easily circulated for study and no doubt less argumentative, so he supposed that was the reason for it.

Segundus, though, could not help coming back to Starecross. He knew it was important, still felt that tug on his ribs drawing him to it when he read the word, saw a hazy memory of a man in a crown and felt an echo of magic wrapping its tendrils around his wrist, urging him on.

“John, are you sure you’re alright?” Margaret Honeyfoot was looking down at him, concern wrinkling her brow. Segundus blinked back to himself, remembered he was in the Honeyfoots’ house for their weekly Sunday lunch.

“Yes, yes I’m fine,” he said, and rubbed his eyes. “I’m just a bit tired, is all.”

It was true enough, but he didn’t want to admit that he was still drained after his encounter with Mrs Howarth’s rose bush yesterday. He had gone after work with George to check on the magic on the pansies, and although that seemed to be working quite well (other than a slightly odd side-effect of the flowers now being able to speak, and using this new ability to alert Mrs Howarth to every appearance of slugs), the bush with the red-and-white roses now had a number of blooms. As he had caught sight of them, the headache and dizziness he had experienced the first time returned, although thankfully he was more prepared this time and managed not to faint.

The strange thing was, he didn’t feel any magic from the bush itself: it was like a memory of magic, and powerful magic at that. It was the scent of a grandmother’s home that sent one back to one particular day, but instead of reminding Segundus about the particular quality of the light, it sent his head reeling and put him in mind of a handsome man in a silver crown, of a stained marble floor.

He had turned his attention to the pansies instead, and had remembered the heather-scented breeze, the surprise on Childermass’ face, that tug between them as they worked the magic. It had helped, but his mind kept flicking back to the roses.

Margaret levelled a look at him that told him quite plainly that she didn’t believe him, but thankfully didn’t say anything more about it.

“Come on then, lad,” she said, offering him her hand. “Come and meet Sarah, it’s been long enough.”

He followed her into the kitchen, where Jane and Beth were talking excitedly over each other to a girl Segundus recognised from the family photos, while George stood smiling proudly over his brood. Sarah looked somewhere between amused and bemused by her sisters’ attentions, her backpack still slung over one shoulder and her jacket draped over her arm. She glanced over as Segundus and her mother entered the room, and smiled slowly.

“Ah,” said Sarah, looking him up and down. Her smile was as warm as her father’s, but there was a mischievous glint in her eye that was more her mother’s. “So you’re the famous John Segundus.”

“I’m afraid so,” he answered, shaking her offered hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Oh, and you.” He could tell she was holding back laughter, but it seemed of a kind sort. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said. “I’d be careful, I think dad’s waiting to pounce with the adoption papers.”

At lunch, Segundus found himself sat between Sarah and George, which seemed to amuse Sarah greatly in a way that made her roll her eyes while smiling. It was a lively affair, the younger girls keen to show off to their older sister, and Sarah happy to talk about university.

Segundus tried to take part, but kept feeling his mind retreating to the roses, to thoughts of the Book and of Starecross. He tried to involve himself in the conversation, but he was tired, and the warm, muggy weather wasn’t helping things. He felt guilty about not being more friendly, more open to the Honeyfoots, to Sarah, but try as he might, he couldn’t force his way out of the maze.

George gave him a lift home once it had turned dark, asking all the way if he was alright, that he didn’t seem quite himself. Segundus had grown quiet again, his head starting to ache in its increasingly familiar way, and they said muted goodbyes when Segundus asked to be dropped on the far side of the river. He needed the walk, he explained, needed the air to clear his head.

He walked slowly, breathing deeply, taking account of the city around him. The towers of the cathedral loomed above the other buildings, floodlit and glowing against the black sky. They would disappear every now and then, but he knew they were there all the same, could almost see them though the bricks blocking them from sight.

A shiver crept up his neck as he crossed the bridge, mild and more of a tickle, really. On the bank of the river, a small group of dark figures were huddled around a weak greenish light. A shape moved within it, and a couple of the figures jumped backwards, squealing in either delight or terror, it was hard to tell. The laughter that followed was a better clue. Segundus smiled at the group and carried on, the scent of fresh fireworks and candyfloss in his nostrils.

The fugue he had floated through all day abated a little as he walked. There weren’t many people around, most having somewhere better to be on a Sunday evening: family to visit, work to prepare for, lingering dinners with friends. Segundus was glad of the quiet, of the opportunity to settle his thoughts. He wondered where Childermass was, what the business was that had taken him off so urgently. He wondered if he was so constantly distracted by three minutes of magic.

When he reached Lady Peckett’s Yard, he said a quick good evening to Mrs Pleasance and climbed the stairs to his room. He sat down to look over his notes.

There they were, the symbols: horned circles, squiggles that were possibly hawthorn trees, endless arrangements of triangles. They had been drawn by his own hand, and beside them were translations in his own writing. _Bell-heather; Sunlight; Fearfulness and Arrogance_. He had no memory of writing them, no idea what it might mean, and it bothered him greatly.

He recognised the symbols, of course. They were the King’s Letters. But where the translations had come from he did not know. He frowned at them for some time, feeling his headache return. He poured some water into a shining crystal glass he had found on his desk but Mrs Pleasance had claimed never to have seen, and took a drink. His head eased a little, and he found he could read for a while longer.

Eventually, he forced himself to bed. He dreamt of Childermass, eyes dark and close and old, his low voice saying roughly, “ _It cannot be known_ ”.

The paper would not be ready for the meeting on Wednesday, he realised on waking, and set to finishing his work on roses. It seemed safer, somehow, didn’t make his heart rattle in his chest like the odd symbols of the Letters had started to. It was something like fear, that rattle, or anticipation. The moment before the rollercoaster crested the top of the ramp and sped downwards. He was approaching that drop, he felt it as surely as he had felt Childermass’ magic, and was as blind to where it led.

*

His next day off, he gave in to the urge in his feet and found himself waiting for the bus to Helmsley, the change for the fare clutched in his hand. He had been feeling the breeze from the moors in his hair for weeks, had been catching the wet-earth scent of them in the farthest corners of the shop, in the kitchen of Mrs Pleasance’s, against his own pillows as he tried to get to sleep, and knew it was time.

The day was bright and warm, filled with all the promise of spring. The blackthorn was thick with white flowers, the hawthorn trees unfurling their leaves to catch up with their neighbours. The sun was hot on his neck but the breeze was cool as he walked up the hill.

The change in season had transformed the landscape utterly. The carpet of bracken and heather had been dull and brown in February, but now was lush and green. He felt calmer than he had in weeks, drinking in the sight of it. The tugging sensation that had been nagging at him slackened with every step, and when he reached a familiar rise he smiled to himself, remembering the dark figure coming towards him over the winter-bleak moor.

Starecross was as transformed as the landscape. The village was empty, a combination of it being both a weekend and the Easter holidays, and when he reached the main building he found it in a riot of leaves and blooms, unrecognisable from its nakedness of February. Roses climbed the side of the mews, apple trees stood along the wall against the moor, pink buds eager to burst into bloom.

The doors remained as shut as they always had, the keypads blinking out a haughty reminder that he was not allowed through. He was prepared this time, though, and didn’t feel the sting as keenly. Instead, he wandered through the garden, trailing his fingers over fresh green leaves. The feeling of magic on the air wasn’t as strong as it had been, but there was a memory of it singing through the plants and the stones, just a gentle melody humming in the background.

He had been in the garden about half an hour before he felt eyes on him. He looked around, but the garden was empty, so he turned to the building. The windows were old and warped, tiny plates of glass held in place by lattices of lead, so it was impossible to see in with any clarity. He thought he caught movement in an upstairs window, felt the tight weave of magic more than his eyes picked up on anything. The sensation was gone as quickly as it had appeared. He glanced back towards the door, some vain hope that it might suddenly unlock and let him enter rising in his breast, but the light on the keypad stayed red.

His walk back to Helmsley was more of a trudge. He wished he knew why Starecross held such fascination for him, why he wanted so desperately to be let in. It went beyond any curiosity he had felt: he _needed_ to get in, needed to figure it out. There was some clue hidden there, he knew. It was the last place the Book had been seen, there had to be _something_.

He needed to talk to someone about it, get it off his chest before it consumed him. The Society would think he was mad, George would try his best to understand but he had never seemed to feel magic as deeply as Segundus.

He stopped in the middle of the moor, turned to face the wind and closed his eyes. He breathed it in, cold and fresh. The _peee-wit_ call of a lapwing floated to him.

He needed to speak to Childermass, but he had no idea where he was, no idea how long he would be away, no phone number to contact him on. All of a sudden, he felt wrung out, aching, as if all the words and ideas he was unable to voice were battering against his ribs to get out of him.

Quite ridiculously, he missed Childermass with an almost physical pang. He missed his wry smile, his rough voice, the look on his face when he _listened_ , as so few magicians did. Would Childermass tell him why he had gone so abruptly? There was no obligation for him to tell Segundus anything, of course, but the hope that he would rose in his chest anyway.

Taking a deep breath of the heather-scented air, he carried on down the hill, unable to disguise from himself his own disappointment.


	9. Chapter 9

Segundus had not expected to be startled out of his skin upon leaving work.

He had locked the door of the shop behind him and said goodnight to Suzanne, waving her away up the Yard. When he had turned to go home in the opposite direction, Childermass was standing behind him, propped up against the wall of the shop next door. He hadn’t heard him approach, hadn’t seen him, and the sight of him suddenly _there_ left Segundus with a hand clasped to his chest while he tried to catch the breath which had been so rudely jolted out of him.

“How long have you been there?” He asked, his hand over his racing heart while Childermass smirked at him in a peculiarly self-satisfied way.

“Not long.” Childermass looked at him a while longer, sly smile firmly in place, before glancing up and down the street. “Are you busy tonight? I need a hand with something, and decided you were my best option.”

“Thursday usually means Emmerdale with Mrs Pleasance,” Segundus said, slipping his hands into his pockets and enjoying the twitch of Childermass’ mouth. He tried to hide his inexplicable pleasure at seeing him again; Childermass had been away almost a month, and Segundus was a little embarrassed at how keenly he had felt his absence. “It’s a very important part of my week, I don’t think I can cancel on such short notice.”

“Not even for some magic?” Childermass raised an eyebrow, looking very much like he knew how Segundus would react to his question.

“What kind of magic?” Segundus asked, his heart skipping against his ribs. He thought of the day in Mrs Howarth’s garden, their magic playing over his skin, and felt the hairs on his arms rise. Childermass just quirked his eyebrow and walked away. Segundus was tempted to stay where he was, not to follow as Childermass was so obviously sure he would, but he felt the month he had been away so acutely that he was walking quickly to keep up before he was aware of it.

He followed Childermass out of the city centre and across the bridge. They walked in comfortable silence for almost half an hour, until they reached a large square building which contained Childermass’ small square flat. Childermass led him to the living room: a small square room with small square double-glazed windows. Segundus hadn’t realised how used he had got to the strange angles and wood-beamed character of Mrs Pleasance’s ancient house until he was confronted by the utilitarianism of Childermass’ modern flat.

“I’ve been trying to use MacArthur’s _Limitations_ ,” Childermass said as he moved around, turning lights on and hanging his coat up behind the door. He moved with a casual grace, not really looking at what he was doing but hitting every point perfectly. Segundus wondered how long he had lived here, how often he had performed these exact tasks. “But I haven’t had much success. I thought you might have some idea where I’m going wrong. Sit down.”

The room was tidy, but looked as if it had been a while since its last coat of paint. Segundus sat on the worn couch in the furthest corner from the door and looked around. A small bookshelf stood against the far wall, half empty of books but cluttered with the paraphernalia of a practical magician. There were bunches of dried herbs and flowers; jars of pebbles each labelled with the name of a different county; a number of half-burnt candles in ancient-looking sticks; what looked like a pack of cards, so well-used they seemed too tattered to be of much use in a serious game, too many of them for a standard deck. Beside the bookcase was a shabby looking desk covered in a selection of books and papers, all stacked neatly in definite piles, pens and pencils lined up with military precision.

“Look through these. I’ll be back in a minute.” Childermass handed him a few loose sheets of paper from the desk and disappeared through to the kitchen. Some quietly industrious noises floated through, and Segundus turned his attention to the papers.

Outlined in Childermass’ brisk, business-like handwriting was the summary of a problem, and below that a bullet point list of solutions to try. Most had been scored out, and the following pages contained his notes on what exactly he had tried and what the results had been. It seemed Childermass’ client owned racehorses, and was sick of ramblers wandering through and not shutting gates behind them. A letter at the very end of the papers showed this man’s incredible irritation at having spent a week looking for his prize gelding and missing a valuable race before the horse decided to wander home again a day later. He had requested a spell of punishment for the absent-minded walkers, but Childermass seemed more of a mind for establishing magical boundaries for the animals.

“I think Middlewick would be a good start,” said Segundus, still looking down at the papers (on which he was now making notes) when he heard Childermass come back through. “In her revisions on de Chepe, she- Oh, thank you!” He cut himself off, and had to put the papers down as Childermass handed him a bowl of spaghetti and a fork.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of you missing Emmerdale _and_ dinner,” Childermass said, a laugh in his voice. There was a clink as he set down a bottle and two mismatched glasses, pouring them each a glass of wine. “But carry on, please.” He swirled his own fork in the bowl and took a mouthful while looking expectantly at Segundus, who picked up where he had left off.

They carried on like that, taking turns to speak and eat, as Segundus described Middlewick’s alterations to one of de Chepe’s little-known spells.

“So you’re proposing a labyrinth?” Childermass asked, refilling their glasses.

“No, not necessarily. There’s a whole section on boundaries and delineations I’m sure would work well. We would just need to find a way to change the intended subject from people to horses.”

“I didn’t know that,” Childermass admitted, a little gruffly. “I mainly know de Chepe from Norrell’s use of him.”

“Oh!” Segundus exclaimed with a snort. “The great labyrinth of Hurtfew Abbey!” He shook his head. “It will always astound me how John Uskglass could choose such a selfish, controlling man to bring about the return of English magic.”

“Magic was seen as a much more dangerous thing, then,” said Childermass. “The knowledge of it had disappeared from general life. You can’t see why Norrell would have been nervous about protecting such a large collection?”

“It had disappeared from general life because Gilbert Norrell hoarded all the books he could find for over forty years,” Segundus pointed out. “I read somewhere that he had _four_ copies of _A Faire Wood Withering_!” He turned to fix Childermass with an incredulous gaze. “I’d never have taken you for a Norrellite.”

“I’m not saying I agree with his actions,” Childermass said, “but I can understand why he behaved as he did.” His voice had that curious tone it often did in an argument: low and steady and irritatingly rational.

“He was the worst kind of censor!” Segundus cried, then hurriedly swallowed his spaghetti when he realised he had just spoken with his mouth full. He washed it down with some of the terrible wine. “I don’t know how you can excuse that!”

“I’m not excusing it.” Childermass was looking at him intently, fork stuck into his pasta but not moving. “He was a scared old man, and he did what he did because he thought it for the best.”

“God save us from frightened old men.” Segundus rolled his eyes and rested his chin in his hand. “If he hadn’t been so terrified of other people’s magic then just think where we might be today. The vanishing of Hurtfew is the magical equivalent of the burning of the library of Alexandria, and it is all due to Norrell’s fear and hoarding. And I’m sorry, but I don’t agree-”

Childermass interrupted with a laugh. “Now there’s a surprise!”

“I don’t agree that he did it all out of anxiety,” Segundus pressed on, ignoring him. “Fear did certainly play a part in his actions, but there was also no small element of self-aggrandisement. He enjoyed the power it gave him, I’m certain of it.”

For a moment, Segundus caught the scent of something other than Childermass’ bolognese sauce. It was wood smoke, perhaps, and roast meat, the sweet fragrance of pipe tobacco and snow on the other side of a window. Childermass was saying something, but he sounded muted and far away, and the movement of his mouth didn’t match up with the shape of the words Segundus couldn’t quite hear. The light in the room dimmed, the walls moved further away. He felt the flush of an argument on his cheeks, but somehow knew it was a different quarrel. If he tried, he might be able to remember what it was…

“John?” His name broke through the fugue that had taken him, and all around him was only Childermass’ small flat and the scent of their dinner. “What’s wrong?” Childermass’ hand was tight around his arm.

“Oh,” Segundus said, blinking back to himself. “Nothing, nothing. I’m sorry, I...” He shook away the last of the smoke in his nostrils and looked away from Childermass. There was something about the concern in Childermass’ face that he found he couldn’t quite bear, and he turned away on the pretence of picking up his wine. “What were you saying?”

“I think it was something about your pig-headedness,” Childermass said, his tone joking but his eyes concerned. “We haven’t discussed the magic,” he said after a moment, his lips pressing together. Segundus knew immediately that he didn’t mean de Chepe, and that it wasn’t at all what he had said before. He was at once glad for the change of subject, and anxious about discussing something that felt so personal.

“We haven’t.” He sighed, drained his glass, and looked back at Childermass. “What do you want to know?”

“How long?” Childermass had a hungry look about him, something in the dark depths of his eyes. Segundus swallowed and shrugged.

“Since I can remember,” he answered, rolling his empty glass between his palms. “It was terrible when I was younger – I had to sit outside the classroom whenever we did practical magic at school, even just communing with flowers.” He explained to Childermass the headaches, the dizziness that used to plague him, how so many clashing magicks in such a small space was so completely overwhelming to him. “It got better as I got older, or I got used to dealing with it. I suppose we see less magic as we grow up. Uni was a nightmare, though. I had to get special permission to take the labs and practical exams alone.” He shook his head, remembering the suspicious looks of his classmates, sure he was making it up for extra time or attention. “What about you?” He asked, looking back to Childermass.

“Similar, although I never got further than my O-Levels,” he said, nodding. “It’s handy, sometimes, being able to tell if someone else is doing magic. In my business, anyway.”

“Do you… Are… Can you tell the difference between different people?” It wasn’t something Segundus had been particularly aware of, not until recently, but he couldn’t shake the thought that it might just be his imagination. This felt like his only chance to ask.

“On occasion,” Childermass answered, his tone a little wary. He looked at Segundus for a long moment before tilting his chin. “I could tell yours straight away.”

Segundus’ heart seemed to stop and speed up all at once, leaving his insides lurching. It was what he had hoped for, or what he had feared. He wasn’t sure which.

“It… didn’t clash, I suppose,” Childermass continued. “I’ve found most magic seems to… run on a different frequency, almost. I think that’s what leads to the symptoms you described. When we were working together, though, it was…” He trailed off, teeth sinking into his lower lip.

“More like a harmony,” Segundus finished for him, uncertain but hopeful. He was rewarded by a warm, honest smile from Childermass, free of all signs of the sarcasm that usually hung about him.

“Exactly.” There was something in his smile that made Segundus’ gut flip.

“The spell on the pansies seems to be working well,” he said, turning to refill his wine glass to hide his burning cheeks. “I popped in on Mrs Howarth the week after we visited, and I’ve phoned her a few times. She’s quite happy with it, despite the side-effects.”

“Good,” Childermass nodded, held out his glass for Segundus to fill. “I saw her on my way back, actually.”

The heat in Segundus’ cheeks died down as the conversation turned to the garden, and he was grateful to Childermass for allowing it to be steered in that direction. The burn of embarrassment was replaced by the comfortable warmth of the wine, and he found himself and, delightfully, Childermass, laughing more as the evening went on.

Childermass offered to open a second bottle of wine when they finished the first, but remembering their night after the pub, Segundus politely refused, unsure if could survive the embarrassment of something similar happening again. Childermass seemed to sense his train of thought, as he put the bottle away with a small, amused smiled before excusing himself to the bathroom.

Rather than sit around uselessly, Segundus collected the dishes and took them through to the kitchen. Like the rest of the flat, it was small and tired but tidy, a neatness around the place he wouldn’t have suspected from looking at Childermass’ battered jacket and tatty jeans. He rinsed the plates under the tap, looking out of the window at the view of the dark shared garden, not that he could see much of it.

With night pressing against the glass, the light in the kitchen turned the window into a mirror, the double-glazing giving Segundus a blurry, drunken double image of himself. It was unsettling in a way he couldn’t explain to himself, so he turned his attention back to the dishes and picked up the sponge.

“You don’t have to,” Childermass said, his voice low and warm. In the window, Segundus saw two of him leaning against the door frame, overlapping one another.

“It’s the least I could do,” Segundus answered, glancing over his shoulder with a smile. “You went through the bother of cooking-” Childermass gave a snort which indicated that the cooking had not been much of a bother at all “- and I’ve had a lovely evening.”

“You’ve had an evening of arguing,” Childermass pointed out, his voice round with laughter.

“Which has been lovely,” Segundus insisted, turning back to the dishes, hoping he was making it clear that he wasn’t going to accept any further debate on the matter.

It was a moment before Childermass spoke again, and when he did, he sounded much closer than before. Segundus glanced at the window, and in the reflection saw Childermass standing just behind him, merging with him at the edges in that eerie way. His breath was warm and light against his cheek. Segundus hadn’t heard him move.

“The evening doesn’t have to be over yet.” Childermass’ voice was so low that Segundus almost didn’t hear him. The words were followed by a touch of lips to his neck so light he might have thought he’d imagined it if he hadn’t been watching their reflection in the window, hadn’t seen the slight dip of Childermass’ head. The breath he let out shook in his chest and the fork in his hand clattered into the sink.

“I thought you’d had enough of my pig-headedness,” he answered, his own voice barely more than a whisper. This earned him a puff of warm breath against his neck as Childermass laughed, more air than sound. He could feel the heat of Childermass at his back, now, although they were not quite close enough to touch. It radiated from him. In the window, Childermass’ attention was on Segundus’ temple, his nose nearly touching his ear, although in one of the superimposing reflections they were pressed together already, a quarter inch ahead of time. Segundus thought, briefly, of the use of mirrors in divination: a future world reflected into this one.

 “I’m sure we can find something to do other than argue.” His lips brushed against Segundus’ neck a little more firmly this time, the scratch of his stubble unmistakable just below his ear.

“That,” Segundus said, drawing it out as he tried to breathe normally, to get his racing heart under control. He found he was gripping the edge of the sink with white knuckles to stop his shaking hands. “That sounds like something we can agree on.”

The gust of Childermass’ sigh wrapped around his throat like a warm scarf; the press of Childermass’ lips to the delicate skin at the corner of his jaw was firm and confident now, paired by his hands coming to rest on Segundus’ hips. Segundus felt something in him snap and release, and he relaxed back against Childermass’ chest, into the heat of him. His whole body shuddered as Childermass’ tongue slipped from between his lips to press against the soft hollow behind his ear, as if he already knew his weaknesses and was determined to exploit them.

Segundus pulled away just far enough to turn around to face him, to look up at dark eyes and the smile toying around them, and kiss him. The press of Childermass’ lips against his, the scrape of his beard, was a breaking of thunder.

It was hungry, and Segundus would have been embarrassed by how obvious his own want was had it not been for Childermass equalling him in it. He moaned into Childermass’ mouth, finding his hands in Childermass’ hair, pulling him closer still. The fingers digging into his hips moved to rest at his neck, cupping his jaw and his skull more gently, but pressing in just hard enough to make Segundus gasp at his mouth.

“Christ,” growled Childermass when they broke for air. His eyes were darker than ever, and Segundus couldn’t help but watch as his tongue darted out to lick his wet lips. Childermass pulled him in again, catching his mouth and trapping him against the counter with his hips, punching a cut-off groan from his lungs. The counter was tight against Segundus’ back, Childermass against the whole front of him. It was pressure and friction and a peculiar sense of completion. He opened his mouth to the taste of it and his heart to the feel of it.

His own hands wandered, scrabbling over whatever part of Childermass they could reach. From his hair they grasped at his strong shoulders, then his lean waist, his hips. When he reached his backside, his fingers digging into the swell of flesh and muscle almost unconsciously, Childermass groaned low in his throat as his hips jerked forward. Segundus gasped in response and clutched more tightly, eliciting the same reaction from Childermass, a closed loop of sensation they were both powerless to stop. One of Childermass’ thighs slipped between Segundus’ legs, and the press of it made him tip his head back to gasp for breath, finally breaking the loose, messy kiss. Immediately, Childermass dipped his head to scrape his teeth over Segundus’ exposed neck, trailing up once more to the spot just at the corner of his jaw, trying (Segundus was sure) to unravel him entirely.

“Oh god,” Segundus panted, his hips rocking into Childermass’, his knee coming up to hook over his hip, to bring them closer. Childermass’ sudden exhale was a hot rush against his ear. “Oh god,” he said again, and wondered briefly if he should be embarrassed by the pitch of his voice, or of the way it cracked towards the end. Before he could worry about it, Childermass’ mouth was on his again, hot and biting, his hands sliding up under his shirt.

“I think,” Childermass said, voice rough, then started again. “I think we should move this somewhere more comfortable.”

“Yes,” Segundus said between kisses. “Yes.” It was difficult to pull himself away, but he fared better when he managed to get his hands against Childermass’ chest and push gently.

Childermass stood back – just a fraction – and looked at him, his eyes raking up and down as if for the first time. He reached out to run a hand through Segundus’ hair, his thumb lingering at his temple, then stepped backwards and jerked his head for Segundus to follow.

He took a moment – barely that – to take a deep breath, to collect himself, and followed Childermass.

The bedroom was frayed around the edges but well-kept and tidy like the rest of the flat, which is to say a little like Childermass himself. It was small, with just enough room for the bed in the corner, a single bed-side table, and a chest of drawers. Childermass closed the curtains, threw a piece of cloth over a mirror which sat beside the chest of drawers, and turned to Segundus with a heavy gaze.

He looked very disreputable then, like the Heathcliff Segundus had first seen, his hair half-pulled from its ponytail hanging over his face, lips red and eyes dark with intention, and Segundus couldn’t help but bite his lip as he looked. His heart was beating frantically, hammering against his ribs, and he put his hands in his pockets to hide how they were shaking. His lips still tingled with the remembrance of Childermass’ on them, soft but harsh with the prickle of beard, and he could still feel the shape of his shoulders under his hands, but he was somehow rooted to the spot, unable to go to him again.

“You do want this?” Childermass asked, his voice as close to uncertain as Segundus had ever heard. His arms hung by his sides, his hands twitching into loose fists and relaxing over and over. It was a small movement, and as soon as Segundus looked Childermass stopped, became still.

“Yes,” Segundus said, and that word passing his lips for the third time freed him like a spell. He put a foot forward, then another, and in a few more steps was across the room. He reached up to cup Childermass’ face in his palm, feeling the bristle of his stubble rasp pleasantly against his skin, and pulled him down for a kiss, sliding his fingers into the unexpected softness of his hair.

It was calmer this time, sweeter. He revelled in the soft slide of Childermass’ lips against his, the gentle stroke of tongue against his own sending a slow, steady heat to swirl in his gut. He fixed his teeth gently in Childermass’ lower lip, sucked it into his own mouth to taste the rawness of it and, taking courage from Childermass’ reaction, pressed the palm of his free hand flat against the fly of Childermass’ jeans.

The breath Childermass drew in was sharp, and emptied Segundus’ lungs. He flexed his fingers, exploring the shape of him through his jeans. Every twitch of his hand, every squeeze, elicited a different sort of breath from him. When he pressed more firmly with the heel of his hand, Childermass let out a full-throated groan before he could stifle himself, and the sound of it was enough to make Segundus step back to take off his own shirt, desperate suddenly for the feel of skin on skin.

He had once read about a desert that had not seen rain for over a hundred years. One day, a cloud had come and bathed the land in a sweet, cool shower. The earth had been so dry for so long that it had drunk in the rain until it could hold no more, and the next day the whole landscape was covered in a carpet of flowers no one alive had ever seen.

Childermass’ skin felt like that rain. The heat of him, the weight of him pressing down on Segundus made something blossom inside him, something that he had known was there but hadn’t been able to imagine. He ran his hands over every inch of him he could reach, as if the two of them were a spell and any part of Childermass left untouched would render it void.

“John,” was breathed into his ear, followed by the nip of teeth and the soothing stroke of tongue, wringing out a shuddering moan from him. He turned his head to catch Childermass’ lips, needed that kiss like nothing else. He pulled the tie from Childermass’ hair and let the dark strands fall around their faces, cutting them off from the world outside.

It was just this, his lips on Childermass’ throat, his collarbone, tracing the shape of the birthmark on his left shoulder. It was Childermass’ face pressed to his neck, stubble scratching his skin, his hands hot against his ribs.

“John,” he said, torn from his lips by fingers at the buckle of his belt and lower. He lay back and let himself be stripped, took the opportunity to catch his breath, to look at Childermass, long and lean and watching Segundus like he was something marvellous. He manoeuvred himself to help Childermass pull his trousers from his legs, watched as he stood to rid himself of his own.

He let his eyes roam over the body now exposed to him: the slim torso so often bulked out by his jacket, the light dusting of hair across his chest, dark nipples, pale birthmark; slender hips, strong legs, cock standing proud from its thicket of dark hair. He felt Childermass’ eyes travelling their own journey over his own pale, skinny body and conquered the urge to cover himself. It had been a long time since he’d looked at anyone like this, since he’d been looked at so intently.

Slowly, Childermass lowered himself onto the bed, crawled up the mattress towards him, pressed a reverent kiss to the mole on the right side of his chest. His hands ran lightly up over his ribs, and Segundus found his own hands tangling in Childermass’ loose hair.

“I knew this would be here,” Childermass said, voice hushed, and he kissed the mole again. He raised his head to look Segundus in the eye. “I don’t know how, I just…” A frown flashed across his face, and Segundus used the hand in his hair to pull him up to kiss it away.

“Come here,” Segundus said against his lips, pulling their hips together, and smiled at the feeling of Childermass’ groan through his chest. He pushed the thought from his mind – that he had not been surprised at the sight of Childermass’ birthmark, that he had known it would be there as the shirt had slipped from his shoulders. He just kissed Childermass and moved up against him, and let any other thoughts be chased from him.

“I’ve wanted you,” Childermass panted, his open mouth against Segundus’ shoulder. “When you kissed me that night, that first-” He broke off with a low groan as Segundus shifted, changed the angle.

He remembered, vaguely, his chaste kiss on Childermass’ rough cheek, how embarrassed he had been at his shamelessness and his drunkenness, how the latter had brought out the first. It was blurry, now, pushed out by sensation and by the weight of the meetings that had followed it: their conversations in the café, in the bookshop, the visit to Mrs Howarth, the late nights in the library when the rest of the household had gone to bed. That one small kiss had paled in the light of all of that.

Childermass pressed down against him, kissed his open mouth, and made sure there was no more room in him for thought, only for chasing the sensation before him, for the feel of Childermass’ skin.

When Childermass froze above him, breath caught half way into his lungs, Segundus dug his fingers into his shoulders and urged him on, came himself a moment after Childermass’ throaty grunt and shuddering breath.

The minutes following seemed to stretch out for hours, Childermass heavy on top of him, their hearts beating rapid counterpoints against each other through their pressed-close chests. Segundus ran his fingers through Childermass’ hair, mumbling nonsense into his ear while Childermass mouthed lazily against his neck. It was over too quickly when Childermass raised himself up on his elbows and rolled to the side, reaching for the box of tissues on the bedside table. He wiped the mess from Segundus’ belly first, kissed his shoulder sloppily while he did so, cleaned himself up after and stood to put the tissues in the bin.

“Come on, shift.” Childermass tugged the covers down as he nudged Segundus’ shoulder, urging him under them. Segundus let himself be manoeuvred, was glad for it as the chill in the air was making its way through his afterglow.

He was comfortable, body and mind hazy and peaceful with the warmth of Childermass beside him, the scent of him all around. He turned, caught Childermass’ lips in a lazy kiss, felt the other man’s smile. When he drifted to sleep, it was with Childermass’ fingers tangled in his own.

*

That night, he dreamed of a dark room lit by a large fire and candles.

“It can’t be,” he realised he was saying, from where he was sitting in a chair by the hearth. He hadn’t been there a moment ago, he was sure. He felt as if he had turned up late to a play.

“Who else would you suggest?” He looked over at the rumble of voice and saw Childermass sitting at the other side of the fireplace, looking like he had just stepped off the set of _Pride and Prejudice_. He seemed older; his dark hair was mostly a steely grey which caught the orange glow of the fire, and deep wrinkles were etched around his eyes and mouth. His life before this dream had been hard, Segundus thought, and his chest ached for him.

“You maybe, but not me.” Segundus found himself speaking without any effort or thought. “I have had very little to do with any of it.”

“When will you give this up, John?” Childermass sighed. He got to his feet with apparent effort, and came to crouch in front of Segundus. His knees cracked alarmingly, which brought a soft chuckle from them both. Childermass took his hands gently in his own and looked up at him. Despite the wrinkles, his eyes were the same: dark and warm and serious. “You have been as instrumental as I have. You asked the question. Believe me, were it not for your interference-” Segundus felt himself laugh a little at this “- Norrell would have been content to stay at Hurtfew for the rest of his days entertaining no one but himself.”

Childermass looked at him for a long moment, so that Segundus was sure his face must have been doing something he objected to. He brought a hand up and smoothed his thumb under Segundus’ eye, his palm resting rough and warm against his cheek.

“You do not believe me,” Childermass continued, a sigh in his tone. “But that does not matter. It refers to us, I have no doubt. In any case, if personal opinions matter in this grand scheme, there is no one else I would rather have with me if it is true.”

He leaned up and kissed Segundus, warm and firm. It was a well-practised gesture, familiar, and Segundus felt himself falling into the shape of it. It was brief, but he felt the warmth of it in his core, felt his heart lift. When Childermass pulled back to look into his eyes with a smile, he slipped away, leaving himself and looking at the scene from the outside.

He saw the grey in his own hair, his own odd costume, the look on his own face as he looked down at Childermass. He had just enough time to see himself bring both hands to Childermass’ face and pull him in for another kiss, and then he was waking.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Segundus sighed and pressed his face more firmly into the pillow, trying to chase the dream he could just remember. He felt still, a quiet right down in his bones like the exhale after a long day. A bus came to a shrieking halt just outside the window and shattered all peace his mind had been able to recoup.

He sat up with a groan and reached out to pull back the curtains, nearly falling out of bed when his hand met nothing but air. Blinking sleepily, he found Childermass’ room as he had last seen it, and wondered where the idea – the _certainty_ – that Childermass would have a four-poster bed with curtains had come from.

“Stay.”

Segundus turned at the bleary grumble, more noise than intelligible word, just in time to see Childermass roll onto his back, chest arching up to the ceiling in a stretch that segued into a yawn. He pawed a hand over to Segundus and caught his wrist, used it to tug him back down to the bed. Segundus let himself be pulled.

“I need to go to work,” Segundus murmured, feeling no real urgency as he rested his head on Childermass’ chest. He closed his eyes as Childermass’ fingers threaded through his hair, massaging his scalp.

“They can wait.” The deep rumble of Childermass’ voice was even huskier first thing in the morning, and the feel of it against his cheek settled something in Segundus that he couldn’t name. Segundus supposed they could indeed wait, and although he had no idea what time it was, he found he didn’t particularly care. In this moment, there was nothing else he wanted to do but lay in the sleepy quiet of John Childermass’ arms.

He had done this a hundred times, a thousand, he was sure. The hollow of John’s shoulder had been carved for him to lie there, the curve of his ribs had been shaped for his hand to rest on and feel his deep, slow breaths. He felt at once hollowed out by and overfull with this intimacy, simply being held on a late spring morning that was neither warm nor cold. There was something ageless in the warmth of John’s skin, in the smell of his hair. When he closed his eyes Segundus could imagine them in a hundred different worlds lying here just like this, not worrying about being late for his classes.

He lost track of how long they stayed like that, but became aware eventually that Childermass had fallen back asleep, his hand stilled in Segundus’ hair.

Segundus gently extricated himself and, pressing a kiss to the birthmark on Childermass’ shoulder, got up and walked as quietly as he could to the bathroom.

The shower took up one corner of the small bathroom, an ancient looking thing with heavy cream plastic dials that practically clunked when he turned them, but the water that came through was warm and powerful. He stepped in and closed his eyes, tipping his face up to the stream.

As he rinsed the shampoo from his hair, he heard the door open, a click barely audible over the rainstorm sound of the water. When he opened his eyes, the vague shape of Childermass was approaching the steamed up shower screen, and in a minute he had stepped inside. The space was small for two of them, but when Childermass pressed close and kissed him it didn’t matter.

The tiles were cold against his back, the air cool when he wasn’t under the warm stream of water, and his skin prickled with gooseflesh. Childermass was warm against him, though, and although his breath was a little stale from sleep, Segundus’ was too so he couldn’t quite bring himself to mind.

“I am definitely going to be late for work,” Segundus gasped as Childermass sucked determinedly at his neck.

“Burntwood owes you more than half an hour,” Childermass muttered against his skin. “If he has any complaints, I’ll have words with him.”

Segundus laughed and kissed him, slipped his hand down between their bodies until Childermass hummed pleasantly into his mouth. “I don’t think he’ll have much sympathy for this. It isn’t exactly a missed bus.”

Childermass’ only reply was to kiss Segundus fiercely, hands framing his face, wiping the water from his cheekbones with his thumbs. Segundus let himself be pressed against the wall, tipped his head back against the coolness of them as Childermass licked the moisture from his throat.

It seemed so much: these touches flowing over him like water, Childermass moving against the grip of his hand. He had always tended to the reserved in these matters, careful of himself and his small life, had always had more important things to focus his attentions on. John Childermass had bypassed all that, all of Segundus’ shyness, with his lazy smile and clever words, and set up camp quite easily. How long had they known each other? Two months? And Childermass had been away on his mysterious business for most of that. It should have been impossible.

Yet here Segundus was, his cheeks red from steam and exertion and a little embarrassment at hearing his own moans echoed back at him from the close shower walls, full of the knowledge that he would trust this man with his life. He had already trusted him with his magic – seen him cup it in his hands like a fledgling bird, something delicate and wonderful – and the two were more or less the same thing in Segundus’ mind. It was a weight, an expectation, taken off of him to feel as known as Childermass made him feel, like any mistake he might make had already been predicted and forgiven.

His whole body trembling, John’s name fell from his lips like the kisses he scattered along his cheeks, his eyelids, the bridge of his nose. Childermass slumped against him, face pressed into his shoulder as he trailed hot damp kisses over Segundus’ hot damp skin as they both regained their breath.

The water turned cold above them, and Childermass kissed him in the cool spray. It was rain, Segundus thought, and almost felt summer grass beneath his bare feet, smelt the damp earth and the lilacs. Childermass pulled back with a small smile he felt himself mirror, reached up beside Segundus’ head to turn the water off. The world was quiet again, just Childermass’ unsteady breath and his own unsteady heart audible to him in the small space.

Childermass took his hand and pulled him from the shower. He handed Segundus a towel before wrapping one around his own waist, then crouched down to rummage in the cabinet beneath the sink. He gave him a toothbrush, new in its packaging, and Segundus couldn’t stop the laughter from escaping him.

“I hope you hadn’t planned on this,” he said to Childermass’ curious look. “I would hate to think I’m quite so transparent.” Childermass laughed at that, caught his wrist and pulled him close for another kiss, fleeting this time, although it still made Segundus’ heart leap.

“I’d hoped, but not planned,” he answered, stepping away, one hand on the bathroom door. “But it’s in my nature to be prepared.” He grinned wickedly and stepped out.

Once he had brushed his teeth, he returned to the bedroom while Childermass slipped past him to the bathroom. It was a dance of morning logistics he had not performed in a long while, and was surprised to find none of his usual clumsiness in his steps.

As he dressed, he found that his clothes seemed to fit him differently now than they had yesterday, as if he had outgrown them somehow or someone had snuck into the room in the middle of the night and swapped them for something else. The buttons didn’t seem quite right, the texture of the fabric odd.

He removed the cloth from the mirror in the bedroom to make sure he was presentable enough for work, and noticed the purple mark just peeking above the collar of his shirt. He laughed, and was running his fingers over it to gauge the sensitivity when Childermass came back.

“Suits you,” he said, slipping his arms around Segundus from behind, hands clasping over his stomach as he brushed his lips over the mark, the damp ends of his hair turning Segundus’ shirt transparent in spots where they grazed his shoulder.

“You’re a brute,” Segundus chided, turning his head to catch him in a kiss that tingled with mint, firm and uncomplicated.

“So I’ve been told.” He stepped back, catching Segundus’ hand in his own. “Come on, I’ll walk you to work. I’ve got business in the centre anyway.” His crooked grin, his rough palm against his own, the soap-clean smell of his skin all combined to make Segundus’ stomach swoop. He watched as Childermass’ clever hands made short work of pulling his hair back into a rough ponytail doubled back on itself, damp and spiky.

They walked the half hour back to the city centre, stopping at a greasy spoon on the way to get a couple of cardboard cups of tea and some bacon rolls that they ate as they walked. It was easy, the walk and the conversation, but Segundus nevertheless felt some quiet kind of dread building in his guts.

He was happy, he realised, but the world had never let him be truly happy for long.

“Can I come back tonight?” Segundus asked when they reached Stonegate, and blushed a little at his own presumptuousness, at his own eagerness. “Only, I’d like you to have a look at the paper I’ve been working on, and-”

“I’ll look forward to it.” Childermass’ smile was small and amused, but his eyes shone kindly as he watched Segundus with his arms crossed, his fingers twitching against the arm of his jacket.

“Well, thank you,” Segundus said, although it felt inadequate. “I’ll bring dinner,” he added on impulse. “I suppose it’s my turn, if this is to be a regular thing.”

“Do you want it to be?” Childermass’ grin spread lazily over his face. Segundus felt the urge to punch him on the arm for the teasing, and let himself give in to it. Childermass laughed, low and throaty, and Segundus _really_ needed to get to work, although summoning the will was getting more difficult by the second.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he managed to say, and stepped backwards into Coffee Yard. He wanted to kiss Childermass then, step up and just kiss his cheek quickly, but he dared not. Not before nine in the morning on Stonegate, busy with people heading to work. Childermass seemed to know it, his grin shrinking to a small, tight smile as he nodded and stepped away himself, his hands slipping into his pockets. Segundus watched him disappear into the early morning crowds, then retreated down the snicket to his own work.

In the end, he was only fifteen minutes late. Burntwood just grunted at him and told him to get to it, but Suzanne lifted an eyebrow that told him she had noticed he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, and her eyes lingered knowingly on the bruise on his neck. He flushed, and tried to drown the sound of her laughter in his work.

*

Segundus’ heart pounded as he made his way up the stairs to his room to change his clothes and find his paper on the Book of the Raven King. His hand hovered over his desk for a moment as he deliberated, and in the end he picked up his notebooks and slipped them into his bag with his paper.

He had grown more and more nervous throughout the day, despite the comfortable morning he had shared with Childermass. The unease that had settled in his stomach as they had walked into town had grown louder as the day went on. _It won’t last_ , it said to him in a voice a little like his own. He tried to push the feeling down, to ignore the pessimism climbing inside him like ivy. It was nothing but anxiety, he told himself, and pushed it to the back of his mind.

Childermass had popped into the shop earlier (providing a moment of relief from his building dread), offering to meet Segundus after work and walk him back to his flat. Segundus had, regretfully, declined. He knew he had things to collect from home, and anyway he knew the way to Childermass’ flat. It was a peculiar talent of his, he had explained, finding his way about, and Childermass had given him a curious smile.

Part of him was glad for the walk, for the chance to let his mind settle, to gather his thoughts on what he would say to Childermass about his paper, to think of answers to questions he might ask (although he had never yet predicted the current of the man’s mind). More than once he found his thoughts drifting to the feel of Childermass’ hands on his ribs, and had to steer them back to safer waters. The weight of his notebooks in his bags nudged him back on course, a reminder of the need he had felt to talk to Childermass about it.

So absorbed was he in these thoughts that he found he was nearly at Childermass’ door when he remembered about his promise to bring dinner. Hastily doubling back on himself, he popped into a chippy he had passed on the way.

“Evening,” Childermass said when he opened the door, a smile tugging on the corner of his mouth as he leaned against the door frame.

“I’m sorry it’s nothing fancier,” Segundus said, handing the parcel of steaming, sharp-scented newspaper over to Childermass. “I ran out of time.”

“You’ll not find me complaining.” Childermass stood aside and let him in, gestured him to the sofa. As Segundus passed him, though, he seemed to change his mind: the hand that had been gesturing closed around Segundus’ wrist, caught him half way to the couch and froze him there like a spell. Childermass tugged him a little towards him, and slowly, almost hesitantly, kissed him just at the corner of his mouth. Segundus turned his face towards him, caught his lips properly, pulled back smiling. Childermass slowly released his wrist, let him walk reluctantly to the sofa as he himself disappeared into the kitchen.

Segundus folded his jacket over the arm of the sofa, set his bag beside him, and sat down just as Childermass reappeared with forks and a couple of cans of beer. His mouth had been watering at the smell of the chips the whole of his walk, and he was glad to settle on Childermass’ couch to eat. Childermass was quiet, listening to Segundus talk about his day as he ate, saying only a little about his own.

“So, what’s this paper, then?” Childermass asked once the chips had been eaten and the paper put in the bin, leaning back and stretching his arm along the back of the couch.

“It’s not finished,” Segundus said, reaching into his bag to pull it out. “But if you’ve got any thoughts on it do let me know. I seem to have got rather stuck.”

He tried not to watch Childermass’ face as he read, but he found himself unable to look away. He had started with an expression of interest, but the further he got into the paper the deeper his frown became. It didn’t lift when he finished reading and looked at Segundus.

There was something flat and unreadable in his eyes when their gazes met.

“Have you been spying on me?” Childermass’ voice was low, rough with accusation. The paper crinkled in his grip.

Segundus could only look at him wide eyed, pinned in place as he was by the weight of Childermass’ stare.

“What?” He finally managed to force the word from his lips.

“Have you been spying on me?” Childermass repeated more slowly, and there was something else in his voice this time, a fissure. The anger in his eyes shifted with something like distress, like betrayal.

“I’m sorry, I don’t… What?” Segundus was lost for words.

Childermass stood and tossed the paper onto the seat where he had been a moment ago. “How did you know that’s what I was looking for? Were you using mirrors? Birds?” His voice shook, so slightly that Segundus barely caught it, but it was enough to make him stand.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, John.” He reached out to Childermass’ arm, curled his fingers around his bicep and gave what he hoped would be a reassuring squeeze. The moment of calm let his mind catch up. “That’s where you were when you were away, wasn’t it? You were looking for it?”

Childermass still looked wary, but he didn’t shrug off Segundus’ hand. “You mean you really didn’t know?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “I swear.” He gave Childermass’ arm another squeeze, felt the tension seep from him.

“So you started looking into it yourself?” The accusation had left Childermass’ eyes, but there was still a measure of disbelief in his voice. Segundus felt it too, so he couldn’t blame him. What was the likelihood that they would both start down such a specific road of enquiry independently?

“I started thinking about it after Professor Fforde’s lecture,” he explained, his hand slipping down to take hold of Childermass’, “and I couldn’t shake the thought of it. I don’t know what it is, but I felt I had to look into it, and the more I looked the more I _had_ to look. It’s like…” He swallowed, shook his head, tried to find the words for it behind his eyelids. It had felt so right, but trying to _explain_ that feeling – the way it had tugged at his ribs – was impossible.

“Something in your blood pulling you along?” Childermass’ voice had turned gentle, and Segundus snapped his head back up to look at him.

“Yes,” he answered, his heart thumping against his ribcage. “Yes, that’s exactly it.”

Something sparked, then, in Childermass’ eyes, the intensity of them focusing to a burning point. Segundus felt it coursing through him, that feeling of being _known_.

“Have you dreamt of it?” Childermass asked, eyes glittering, his hand tight on Segundus’ arm.

“Not of the Book,” he said, as fragments of the dreams and almost-dreams he had seen since arriving in York came back to him, cool and fragrant and real. “But… other things.” He swallowed, had to look away from the force of Childermass’ gaze. He caught sight of his bag beside the sofa and looked back to him, hope skipping in his breast. “I haven’t dreamt of it, exactly, but I need to show you something.”

Childermass’ hands fell from his arms as Segundus stepped away to rummage through his bag. He came up with his notebooks, flicked through them as he crossed the small room, desperate to find the right page.

“These are the notes I was taking as I was writing. These parts in the margins, the King’s Letters…”

“You didn’t make any mention of translating them in your article,” Childermass said, frowning at the notes, running his fingers over the symbols.

“That’s because I don’t remember writing it.”

Childermass’ gaze snapped up to his. “But this is your handwriting, your notebook.” There was a tremor in his voice, not the anger of before, but excitement. “You have no memory of it at all?”

Segundus shook his head. “No. I would only find them the next time I looked, the symbols and the translation side by side. If I think hard enough, I still don’t remember writing them, but… it feels like I’ve seen them before, read them somewhere else and I’ve merely copied them.”

“I’ve never seen these translations published anywhere.”

“Neither have I. I’ve looked and looked for where I might have seen them, but I’ve found nothing.”

“I have seen them before, though.” Childermass turned sharply on his heel and strode over to the desk against the wall. He rummaged for a time, each second tightening something in Segundus’ chest, and eventually came back over with a notebook of his own opened to a page full of symbols and words. _Fearfulness and Arrogance_ , _bell-heather_ , _time_ , all written out in Childermass’ brisk hand, all beside the same symbols as in Segundus’ notes.

Their eyes met over the book, Childermass’ wide and bright with the mystery, Segundus sure his were the same. His heart was a wild thing in his chest, his hands trembling as he held Childermass’ notebook. Warm hands closed around his, steadying them, and a long, slow smile spread across Childermass’ face.

 


	11. Chapter 11

It was impossible.

Lined up side by side, their notebooks showed the same symbols, the same words beside them. The dates on Childermass’ notes ranged from early February, symbols in the margins every five pages or so. Segundus’ were less neatly kept, largely undated, the sketches and symbols crowding in from the corners.

But they were the same.

“I don’t understand,” Childermass said, but there was something bright in his voice, the thrill of a puzzle to be solved. He took the notebook from Segundus’ grip and sat with them both at the desk, lining them up side by side. There was an enthusiasm in him that, despite their arguments and discussions about magic, Segundus had never quite seen. Now, there was no sign of his usual slouching attitude, none of the usual drawl to his voice. He looked down at the notes with tense shoulders and sharp eyes, his fingers trailing over the words and symbols.

Stepping forward, Segundus laid a hand on his shoulder and felt his twitch of surprise. “How much is there?”

Maybe – after thinking he was too late for it all, too mediocre – this would lead somewhere, would mean he would have had some hand in moving the field forwards. The hope of it rose in his breast, pressing against his ribs and leaving no space for his breath.

“Not much,” Childermass said, verging on breathless himself. Hearing the wonder in Childermass’ voice made Segundus’ heart beat even harder and his hand tightened, almost clutching at the fabric of Childermass’ t-shirt. “It just looks like fragments, but if they mean something – and they _must_ – just think how they could be used.” Childermass cocked his head to look up at him, his long smile sliding up his cheek.

“We must release them,” Segundus said, his cheeks beginning to ache with the grin stretching over his face. “Imagine it, John, the King’s Letters translated at last! Just think what they must say, the knowledge they must hold.”

Childermass’ hand rose to grip at his fingers, squeezing to match the fire in his eyes. Segundus gave himself a moment to imagine it, to let the surge of joy flow through his veins, but the reality of their situation set in too quickly for the feeling to last.

“But who are we?” Childermass asked just as Segundus took a breath to speak. The smile had dropped from his face, the fire in his eyes replaced by no small measure of bitterness. “A shop assistant and an errand boy?”

“We could go to the Society, present it to them, get it wider attention from there.” Even as he spoke, Segundus felt the uncertainty weighing him down.

“They won’t be interested, you know that. If they knew how we came across them we’d be laughed out of the room. You know Foxcastle.”

“There are other channels. People who will listen.”

“We need more evidence,” said Childermass, the words bitter on his tongue. “No magician with any standing will accept ‘ _It came to me in a dream’_ as an argument, not now. You saw what happened to Gledhill.” He gave a heavy sigh and leaned back in his chair, his fingers still tangled with Segundus’ on his shoulder, his eyes shut.

“There must be something,” Segundus sighed. He brought his free hand to Childermass’ hair, pushed the loose strands from his face and tried to soothe the furrow from his brow.

He looked as exhausted as Segundus felt. The rush of excitement had been extinguished too quickly by the blow of reality, and it had left Segundus feeling deflated and drained, but more than anything he wished he could say the right thing to bring that spark back to Childermass’ eyes, to erase the dark circles beneath them. The door to the world had been opened to them for a shining instant, but it had been slammed in their faces and left them in the dark.

Childermass opened his eyes, looked back to the notebooks open on the desk. He looked at them in silence for a long time, his eyes raking over the pages as his thumb pressed against his lower lip.

“There’s a reason for this,” he said eventually, his fingers squeezing Segundus’. “If we can find out what that reason is, make something substantial out of it, we might have a case.”

“Starecross,” Segundus said, firm and certain, and felt Childermass’ gaze return to him like a gust of wind. “I’ve never been sure how to explain it, but ever since I arrived I’ve had the strongest feeling that Starecross has answers, even now I’m still not sure of the questions.”

“But you’ve been, and you didn’t get in.” Childermass chewed at his lip, looked up at him through his dark lashes as his brow creased in thought.

“Yes, twice now.” Segundus sighed and stepped away, feeling suddenly weary. He drew his hand from Childermass’ shoulder and dropped onto the sofa. “I went back last week, but it didn’t help. I only came away knowing that there was _something_ there that I needed to see, and that I needed to speak to you about it.”

“And you’re sure about it?”

“Yes. Like you said, I can feel it in my blood.”

Childermass looked at him for a long moment, and Segundus felt the weight of those dark eyes resting on him, searching through him for an answer to some unknowable question. He seemed to find what he was looking for.

“Leave it with me,” he said. He rose slowly from the chair at his desk and moved to the sofa. He stood there, looking down at Segundus, hands in his pockets as his teeth sank into his lip. “There might be something I can do.”

“There always is,” Segundus sighed. A warmth had blossomed in his chest, an unexpected burst of fondness as he looked up at Childermass’ tired eyes and worried lip. He raised his hand, offered it up to the man before him. Childermass huffed out a laugh and took it, let Segundus pull him onto the sofa.

“You said,” Childermass began, settling himself next to Segundus, close enough that he could feel the tension in him, “that you hadn’t dreamt of the Book, but something else. What was it?”

“Different things – and not necessarily when I’ve been asleep.” He felt his cheeks grow warm as Childermass looked at him. “It’s like… nostalgia, I suppose, but for nothing I’ve done and nowhere I’ve ever been. An impression more than a memory. Sometimes it’s like I’m sensing magic when none is being done.”

He explained the feeling of belonging that had grabbed him by the shoulders his first morning in York, the stone vines of the cathedral wrapping themselves around him and whispering in his ear, _You are home_. He told Childermass about the pure, simple freedom he had felt on the moors, and the way his feet always seemed to know where they were taking him in the north, like they knew what needed to be done. Childermass watched him as he spoke, dark eyes serious and understanding and – Segundus was grateful – never laughing, although he knew everything he was saying was quite patently absurd.

“It sounds ridiculous, I know,” he said, looking down at their joined hands in his lap as his cheeks burned. “But sometimes it’s felt like we’re…” He couldn’t finish, couldn’t say _meant to be together_ out loud, not so soon. He thought of his dream last night, Childermass old and kneeling before him with such familiarity and such kind eyes, and almost opened his mouth to describe it when Childermass spoke.

“I’ve dreamt of you,” he said, eyes never leaving Segundus’, his thumb running over his knuckles in a way that left all of his nerves open and trembling like autumn leaves. “It feels like I’ve known you forever, sometimes.”

Segundus leaned in and kissed him, then, couldn’t help himself. The tenderness in Childermass’ eyes was too much. He knew those eyes, knew the dark, tired circles below them and knew the shape of the creases at their corners. He raised his hand to feel the scrape of his stubble, the shape of his jaw, all the small details that added together to make the man beside him.

It wasn’t coincidence – a magician couldn’t believe in coincidence. The world was such a knot of interconnected strings that a tug on one could make another jump, no matter how separate they may seem. The sky and the earth and the trees were each a part of it, the touch of Childermass’ fingers at his collar another. There was so much world out there and it was all connected, all interwoven from its roots to its branches. No, it could not be coincidence: not the Letters, and not the way Childermass knew exactly what to say and where to touch him, and the thought of it made Segundus feel drunk, on wine or magic or both.

“Do you think,” he asked, long after the shirt had been pushed from his shoulders and Childermass had gasped his name – _their_ name – against his lips, once they had settled against each other on the sofa, too boneless to stumble through to the bedroom, “that if we had lived in an earlier era, there would have been more questions to ask?”

He wasn’t sure where the question had come from, but he thought that the steady beat of Childermass’ heart against his own chest must have jostled it loose and let it float to the surface.

“No,” Childermass answered, stretching his arm across Segundus’ chest, fingers dancing over his bare collarbone, down his sternum. “We’re not short of questions, are we?” He pushed up on his elbow to look down at Segundus, his hair falling loose around his face.

Segundus raised his hand, traced the kink in the soft strands formed where the band had pulled his ponytail together. “I just wonder what it must have been like to have so much to discover.”

“The world’s never short of discoveries to be made," Childermass murmured, his eyes lingering on Segundus’ lips. “They just get more specific.”

“Must you be so infuriatingly rational?”

“I must.” He took Segundus’ hand in his own, traced the palm of his hand with a finger so that he shivered with it. “Before – and during – the Restoration, magicians were concerned with discovering the trunk of the tree. Now we’re looking for the branches.” He drew his finger along Segundus’ thumb, then along the length of each individual finger. “The questions aren’t as big, but they’re just as important.”

“What about when all the branches have been found and named?” Segundus asked, feeling the smile tug at his mouth at his own contrariness.

“Then we will search out the leaves, and the buds, and the fruit. When all that has been found we will trace the roots, and find where they tangle with other trees and flowers.” As he spoke, Childermass drew his finger along the lines of Segundus’ palm, then over the thin skin of his wrist, the sharp bones that protruded there, down his arm to the crook of his elbow. He planted a kiss there, soft at first but followed by a scrape of teeth.

“You’ll discover the world anew,” Segundus gasped.

Childermass pulled back and looked at him with such intensity that Segundus felt his cheeks grow hot. He felt naked – which he was, which was and was not new between them – but he felt his nakedness as something more than physical. It was as if Childermass could see his very nerves, the electric pulse of them, the trunks and branches of blood vessels and neurons mapped under his skin.

“We will,” Childermass said, and kissed him with more than his mouth.

* 

Segundus woke to a noise, to the mattress shifting and the warm presence at his back retreating. It was a struggle to open his eyes, and it took him a couple of blinks to register that it was still dark, the only light coming from hall where it crept in through the crack of the door which had been left ajar.

The noise came again, and his tired mind finally realised it was the phone ringing. He blinked again, and pushed himself up to peer at the clock on Childermass’ bedside table.

3.17am. He lay back down with a grunt and rubbed at his eyes, but almost immediately guilt rose in his throat. The only reason someone would phone at this time of night was because of an emergency. He sat up again and wondered if he should follow Childermass, check if everything was alright. Maybe his…

Segundus realised, with no little shock, that he knew nothing about Childermass’ family. He had no idea if his parents were alive, if he had brothers or sisters, cousins, what. He hadn’t noticed any pictures, but he hadn’t been looking for them. His eyes had been caught and trapped by the desk in the living room, the magical paraphernalia, and in the bedroom he had been too distracted by Childermass himself to take much notice of the decorations. He felt incredibly selfish. He had talked about his own past so much, and been so keen to hear about Childermass’ views on magic, that he had completely neglected to ask him about himself.

Fragments of Childermass’ conversation floated through to him from the living room as he agonised, grunted “yes”es and “no”s and other mutterings, something longer and more heated that he couldn’t quite make out, then the sound of Childermass’ footsteps coming back along the corridor. For a moment, Segundus considered lying back down and feigning sleep, but the thought of Childermass distressed by bad news was enough to keep him up and waiting.

“Sorry,” Childermass said in a whisper, the outline of him illuminated for a moment as he stood in the doorway before the light clicked off behind him. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Is everything alright?” Segundus asked, trying to track his movements in the dark. The mattress dipped at the foot of the bed. “I hope nothing’s happened.”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” Childermass snorted. A wave of cool air hit Segundus as the bedcover was pulled back. “A work thing.” He was silent for a moment as he settled back into bed. His hand was cool when he reached out for Segundus’ shoulder to pull him back down. He sighed, a great release of breath that rocked the bed, and pressed his face to the nape of Segundus’ neck.

“What’s wrong?” Segundus asked, grasping for his hand, pulling it against his chest.

“It’s nothing,” Childermass said again, but his tight muscles against Segundus’ back told a different story.

“John.” Segundus rolled over to look at the dim outline of Childermass’ face, cast by the orange of the streetlights creeping in at the edge of the curtains. He kept Childermass’ hand against his chest. “Tell me, please. If there’s any way I can help…”

The frown creasing Childermass’ brow eased as he huffed out a breath which Segundus suspected was a laugh, but contained no joy.

“Thank you.” Childermass squeezed his hand, brought it to his mouth to brush his lips against his knuckles. All Segundus could make out was the glimmer of his eyes. “But there’s nothing to be done. Go back to sleep, I’ll explain in the morning.” Segundus watched him carefully for a few moments, trying to read his expression. “I promise,” Childermass said, insistent, and rolled onto his other side, pressing his back against Segundus’ chest. When he said, “Sleep,” Segundus felt it thrum through him.

Sleep must have come to him, as when he woke it was light and his chest ached with the memory of his dream. He could not remember what had happened in it, exactly, only that he now felt unaccountably melancholy.

“I’m sorry about last night.” The low grumble of Childermass’ voice came from the doorway, and when Segundus turned over he was leaning against the doorframe, fully dressed with tea in hand.

“Are you sure everything’s alright?” Segundus asked, well aware that he was approaching nagging but unable to stop himself.

With a deep sigh, Childermass pushed himself off the doorframe and walked over to the bed, handing Segundus the mug as he sat down.

“Everything’s fine,” he said, but there was a hint of not bitterness, Segundus thought, but regret in his tone. He sat staring at the space between his knees for some moments, and Segundus let him. After a few minutes of silence he looked up at Segundus and said, “I need to go away again.”

An image came to Segundus, just briefly, of the dark shape of a man standing by a gate, hand on the latch as he looked back over his shoulder. It was, he thought, from his dream. He could feel the chill of the snow on the ground, feel his own arms wrapped tight around his middle as he heard the gate snick shut and the impatient snorting of the horses.

He swallowed, looked back at Childermass, nodded. “I understand.”

“John,” Childermass said, reaching for the shape of his knee under the duvet, but seemed to run out of words then. “John,” he said again a moment later, his eyes drifting to Segundus’ hands, wrapped around the warmth of the mug. “I wish I could stay. I want us to figure this out, but I have to-”

“I understand,” Segundus said again, and he did. Childermass had to work, he knew that. It was Segundus’ own selfishness that didn’t want him to go. “Do you know how long you’ll be?”

“A week, maybe more.” He sighed and lay back on the bed, his hands covering his face. “It’s those bloody horses.” He gave a humourless laugh. “He called at three in the bleedin’ morning about his bloody horses.”

“Oh, the spell we discussed?” Despite his disappointment, Segundus couldn’t help sitting a little straighter in his interest.

“Aye,” Childermass said, his eyes glittering with amusement as he looked up at him. “I did a bit of research on Middlewick yesterday and told him a bit about it, once I’d figured out the practicalities. He now wants me to cast it in Shrewsbury, Carmarthen, and Sussex, as well as Doncaster.”

“That’s wonderful, John,” Segundus said, reaching for his hand.

“He’ll pay nicely for it, I suppose.” When he looked back at Segundus, his eyes burned with the intensity they had the previous night, filled with the mystery of the Letters, of their notebooks. “But it all feels so petty now.”

Segundus felt it, too. He knew he had to go to the shop, help Burntwood out with customers and pricings, but it felt like a distraction from something truly important. He wished he could stay here until they had figured it out, that Childermass could stay, but it was impossible. So many things seemed to be impossible now.

“I need to go,” Childermass said, and pushed himself up with a grunt. He leaned in, kissed Segundus simply and softly. “I said I would see what I could do about the Letters and Starecross, and I will.”

“I’ll see what I can find out.” There were a number of books both in the shop and on his overcrowded shelves at Mrs Pleasance’s, and he was sure George must have something on the subject in his office.

“I’ll let you know what I find, and when I’m back.” He stood, his hand in Segundus’ a last lingering anchor.

Segundus opened his mouth, but it was too soon to say what he wanted to say. Instead he said, “Good luck,” and gave Childermass’ fingers one last squeeze before letting go. The emptiness that had been with him on waking welled up inside him once more.

“Thank you,” Childermass said, and there was something in his dark, serious eyes that Segundus could barely stand to see. He stepped away, told Segundus to help himself to the kitchen for breakfast, that the door would lock itself as it closed so he should make sure he had everything before closing it.

Through this, Segundus became steadily more aware of his nakedness under the sheets, of how clothed Childermass was before him. He didn’t like the vulnerability that crept up his spine as Childermass spoke, not quite meeting his eyes.

“I wish,” Childermass started, but said nothing more. He looked back to Segundus, who by this time was clutching the covers quite ridiculously to his chest. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and when he opened them again his face was different, less open than it had been. “Could you cast a spell of ward and watch as you leave?”

“Of course,” Segundus replied, feeling as though he was actually answering a different question to the one he had been asked. “Is Pevensey alright?”

“Yes,” Childermass said, and took a step back towards the bedroom door. “Thank you,” he said again.

Segundus watched him go, the ghost of a winter wind playing over his bare skin as the front door clicked shut, out of sight. He watched the empty doorframe for a few minutes, not seeing the hall but something beyond it, dim and out of focus, before shaking himself out of his reverie.

As he gathered his things together, he spotted the notebooks sitting on Childermass’ desk. They hadn’t moved since Childermass had looked at them last night, both still open at different pages. The sight of them sitting there side-by-side, belly up in the empty room, gave Segundus the impression that they were his kindred spirits, reluctantly abandoned in Childermass’ flat.

He picked them both up and slipped them into his bag, and headed out to work, finding little of his usual pleasure in magic as he set the spell over Childermass’ door.


	12. Chapter 12

Upon throwing himself into researching the Letters and their translations, Segundus found that what he had expected to be a puddle in the field of thaumaturgy was actually the entrance to an enormous underground cavern system, and he found himself quite lost.

It was something he had known only a little about previously – just the paragraph in an encyclopaedia, really – and he was rather taken aback to see the sprawling arguments, discourses, and factions. He told himself that he should have expected ideological rifts to criss-cross everything: it was a magical discipline, after all, and he knew how much magicians loved to be divisive and contrary. He had never quite seen the appeal in it himself, although he knew many of his acquaintances found great pleasure in it.

Fractions of the Book had been translated over the years, but no full passages had ever been agreed on. The odd symbol had stuck, but others shifted in opinion every five years or so. When he went to the central library he found an issue of _The Ivy Crown_ from 1943 which contained the longest chunk of text he had seen translated, presenting a spell apparently for the curing of goitres. This didn’t strike him as dreadfully inspiring or particularly likely, but he took note of it anyway.

Every translation he found he compared against the symbols he and Childermass had drawn. Nothing agreed completely. Some scholars had translated the odd symbol in the same way as the notebooks, but no two scholars seemed to agree either. The more he looked into it, the more frustrated he became.

Wednesday brought the York Society meeting, which seemed even more argumentative than usual. He struggled to pay attention to the speeches and readings, to the counter-arguments shouted from the floor. This month the members seemed to be particularly incensed by a society in Kent proposing an expedition to map the King’s Roads, something that was undertaken by various societies and universities every few years, with mixed results at best. Segundus spent most of the meeting trying to remember if _all_ of the last expedition (from Swansea, had it been?) had returned or just _most_ , rather than listening as intently as he usually would.

“You really don’t seem quite yourself, John,” George said to him as they descended into the main belly of the pub afterwards. “Are you sure everything’s alright?”

“I’m fine, really,” Segundus said, trying his best to give his friend a reassuring smile. Honeyfoot did not seem convinced.

The traditional post-Society meeting in the bar proved a much better distraction than the meeting itself had, and Segundus got more involved in the discussions. He asked for the table’s opinions on the Book and the Letters, but it varied so much that he left feeling even more confused than before. Mr Kendrick believed the whole thing to be a hoax thought up by the magicians of the Restoration, a construct by Gilbert Norrell’s steward to give him some kind of influence after his master’s disappearance. This very much incensed Charlie Redruth, who seemed to be personally offended that anyone should think that a work of such brilliance (however unintelligible) could have been created by anyone but John Uskglass himself. Charlie talked for so long – Segundus had found that she was more passionate about the Raven King than anyone he had ever met, and was prone to veering off on tangents when the conversation approached him – that there was no time for anyone else to put forth their own view, other than the whispered comments that had been slipped to him under Charlie’s monologue.

It was during these arguments that he most wished he had Childermass to talk to. He couldn’t explain the situation fully to any of the people around him – he had tried to tell George, but he hadn’t grasped the sense of urgency Segundus felt about it, the excitement fizzing in his belly, although he tried to help where he could – for fear of being laughed out of the room and the Society altogether. The further he got on in his readings, the less he found of use, and the more he missed Childermass’ solid, reassuring presence and sensible words. He wished he would phone, that he had left a number or an address so that Segundus could let out at least a little of the ideas swirling in chaos in his mind.

A week passed and Segundus had still not heard anything from Childermass. He shook his head to clear it of the image of a black figure standing by a gate, rubbed his arms to get rid of the chill of snow on his skin.

He kept on at his readings, despite the diminishing returns and convoluted arguments, but by the next Thursday he had run into a brick wall. As he looked through the books Burntwood had set aside for him in his nook (rather half-heartedly, even he would admit), he wondered how Childermass was getting on. He didn’t have the notebooks to reference, as he had left them both for Segundus and was busy travelling the country to secure errant racehorses, but he had said he would try. Segundus believed him, knew that Childermass was a man of his word. He wasn’t so naïve as to think Childermass incapable of being untruthful, but it didn’t seem in his character to lie outright, particularly not about something as easily excused as not working on something while touring the country. All the same, he wondered what exactly Childermass was _able_ to do about it, given his position. Every time his thoughts turned in that direction, towards Childermass, something hot and green flared in his gut as he heard the snick of Childermass’ door closing and he felt the half-imagined breeze cold on his skin.

By the time Segundus got back to Lady Peckett’s Yard that evening he was soaked to the skin from the late spring rain and exhausted. He was used by now to Mrs Pleasance’s jolly welcoming call, but he was not expecting that evening’s addition:

“Good day at work, love? There was a message for you earlier. I’ve left the note by the phone. Sounds very mysterious!”

“Oh, thank you!” He called through to her, and picked up the note on the hall table. It was scribbled in Mrs Pleasance’s hasty writing, so it took him a moment to realise who it was from.

_Come over at half eight tomorrow night if you’re free. I’ve got something that might be of interest.  
\- Heathcliff_

He felt himself blush as he folded the note, and hoped Mrs Pleasance hadn’t been too bemused by the message. He struggled to hide his smile as he took the note upstairs and got changed out of his wet clothes.

He sat down with Mrs Pleasance to watch Emmerdale – grateful for some small relief from the problem of the Letters – and thankfully she kept her comments to “ _Oh, what a scoundrel that Dave Glover is!_ ”, and “ _How blind is that Zoe for choosing Susie over Emma?_ ”, never once mentioning the rather strange note or the grin that kept threatening to take over Segundus’ face, although he did catch her looking at him with a quizzical expression more than once.

The next day he found it was impossible to focus on any kind of useful work, so was happy to take care of the counter while Suzanne saw to some of the more complex jobs in the shop. When closing time came around he was very glad to shut up the shop and head home to eat and change.

When he went into the kitchen to cobble together something quick for dinner, Mrs Pleasance’s natural inquisitiveness finally seemed to win out over her discretion, and she asked what his meeting was about. He quite honestly replied that he didn’t have a clue – well, he amended, he knew the vague idea of it but none of the details. He was glad to get away from her curiosity, and wandered the streets for an hour before making his way across the river.

It had been daylight when he had set off, but dusk settled around him and he watched the streetlights wink on one by one as he walked. By the time he approached the block of flats, the streets were in darkness but the sky glowed a royal blue, the lights in windows glowing gold against the silhouetted buildings.

He pressed the button marked only J.C., and the door buzzed open immediately. He was, he realised as he climbed the stairs, nervous. Usually, Childermass would drop into Thoroughgood’s to invite him over, to tell him something of interest. Why, then, had he decided to leave a message with Mrs Pleasance? And such a cryptic one as that?

“I hoped you’d get the message,” Childermass said as he opened the door. “I’m glad you came.”

“You asked,” said Segundus, at even more of a loss as he stepped in and saw the girl sitting on the sofa. He had been about to reach out for Childermass’ hand, but he stopped himself as he noticed her.

She stood up as Segundus entered the room, Childermass just behind him. She was small, her Doc Martens and denim dungarees making her seem younger than he supposed she was. “This is Hannah,” Childermass explained. “I think I mentioned her?”

“Oh! Yes!” Segundus held his hand out to her. She smiled as she shook it. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I’ve heard about you, John Segundus,” she said to him, the glint in her eyes making the blood rise to his cheeks. Childermass laughed a little behind him, and pushed him towards the sofa. The curtains were drawn, and there were cloths pulled over the small mirrors on the bookshelves and desk.

Hannah sat back down, and Segundus found himself sandwiched between her and Childermass on a sofa that wasn’t quite large enough for three.

“Hannah and I have been discussing things,” Childermass said. He shifted a little to sit on the arm of the sofa, giving the others a little more room, his arm slipping along the seat back behind Segundus’ shoulders.

“Oh?” Segundus asked when neither of them said anything else for a while. “What kind of things?”

“Starecross things.”

“Oh,” Segundus said again.

“Are you free next Sunday morning?” asked Hannah.

“I think so. Suzanne and I do alternate Sundays.” A moment later he thought he had better ask, “Why?”

“Because,” Childermass said, a secret sly in his voice, “the students are away for the holidays, and Hannah has a key.”

“Oh,” said Segundus, and then as the meaning of this sunk in, “Oh!”

“Are you up for it?” Childermass’ dark eyes shone with excitement, with the dare of it. Segundus felt his heart leap with the promise.

“Definitely.” He had felt Starecross tugging at him since he had arrived in York, felt it pulling him closer and closer the day of his walks on the moors. When he had been there, had stood in the gardens and touched the bricks of the school, he had the same sense of… _belonging_ , almost, that he had in York. A knowledge deep inside him that this was where he was meant to be. He had put it down to wishful thinking, to his earlier dashed hopes, but now he saw a glimmer of something similar in the sparkling of Childermass’ eyes and knew there was more to it than that.

“Great,” Hannah said, grinning. “I usually go in for six, clean the main building until eight, and then move onto the annexes.” She sketched out a rough plan of the building on a sheet of paper as she spoke, her hands never still. “Jean usually goes around with me, but she’s off on her hols next week since the students are away, so I’ll be on me own.” Her voice had the same shape as Childermass’, but a lighter colour.

Hannah, Childermass explained, lived in the village of Starecross, and over the next hour they hashed out a plan to get them first there to meet her, and then into Starecross School as quickly and unobtrusively as possible. They all craned together over Hannah’s sketched map, listened to her describe the peculiar layout of the building. Segundus could almost see it as she spoke, could imagine the early summer light spilling in through the windows of the main hall, could almost feel the warmth of it through his jacket.

As they planned, Segundus felt the weariness of the last weeks lift from him. He had run into dead ends wherever he had looked, but they finally seemed to be on a path that had been calling him from the start. Now he was so close to it he was tremulous, filled with the notion that once they took this step there would be no turning back. As strong as that feeling was in his chest, the only reservations he had were the danger of being caught (however slim Hannah assured him this chance was), and starting so early. Childermass seemed to sense some of this wariness, and turned the full weight of his gaze on Segundus.

“If you object to any of this, we can think of another way.” He seemed quite certain about that, quite serious.

“No, it’s a good plan,” he said, and the earnestness in Childermass’ face morphed to his lopsided smile. “I’m just a little apprehensive about the early start.” Childermass laughed a little at that, just a huff of air from his nose, and his arm collided lightly and deliberately against Segundus’ side and stayed there. Segundus bit at the inside of his cheek to stop from smiling.

“Grand,” Hannah said, watching them with a raised eyebrow. “If you arrive around half five we can get sorted. Is there anything else, John?” She looked to Childermass, who shrugged a little and shook his head.

“I don’t think so. I’ll get you home, then.” Childermass got to his feet, and Hannah followed. Segundus stood, too, and headed to the door with them.

“It was nice to meet you, John,” Hannah said, with a companionable sort of smile. “I’ll see you a week on Sunday.”

“And you,” he said, holding his hand out to her once more. “Thank you for all your help. I hope you won’t get into trouble for it.”

She laughed at that, and shook his hand. “I wouldn’t worry about that. John here has a knack of getting folks out of trouble.” She winked up at Childermass, who snorted and rolled his eyes, although his smile was warm.

“I’d like you to wait here, if you don’t mind,” Childermass said to Segundus as he opened the door and Hannah slipped out. “I need to talk to you when I get back.”

“Of course,” Segundus answered immediately.

“I won’t be more than an hour and a half.” He brought a hand to Segundus’ arm and bent down to kiss him on the lips, brief but firm. When he pulled away there was something serious and tired around his eyes.

“I’ll wait,” Segundus said, and in a moment was once again alone in Childermass’ flat as the door closed behind them. He heard their footsteps retreat down the hall, then the screech of the stairwell door opening, and there was silence. He looked around the small, spare space of the living room for a moment before moving over to the window.

Outside, Hannah was climbing onto Childermass’ bike (which was, Segundus had learned during their planning, apparently called Brewer, which seemed an unlikely thing for Childermass to do yet at the same time unutterably charming) behind him. The engine roared to life, and Segundus watched as the red tail lights disappeared off up the street.

Stepping away, he let the curtain fall and turned to look around the room. Remembering the fear that had crept up on him when Childermass had answered the phone those weeks ago, he made himself look further than the books and the magical items on the desk and the shelves. A little guilt rose in his throat as he looked around the room, part of him feeling like he was snooping while another part reminded him that Childermass had left him there knowingly.

The books were arresting in themselves – a small collection consisting of a good mixture of practical and theoretical magic – but on top of the taller shelf he found a single framed photograph. In it, a woman stood with a small boy. Her long dark hair fell across her face so Segundus couldn’t make out her features, but the boy stood facing the camera grinning widely, his eyes squeezed shut with the force of it. Segundus stood looking at it for a long while, never quite daring to take it down for a closer inspection although his fingers twitched to touch it. He wondered briefly if the boy was a young Childermass, but before long he ruled that out when he looked away from the boy’s face and took stock of the more modern clothes both figures were wearing.

Reassured that he now knew something about Childermass that he hadn’t previously – even though he wasn’t precisely sure _what_ he knew – he let himself look around a little more freely.

After fifteen, maybe twenty more minutes, he had found nothing else of such a personal nature. There may have been something in the desk drawers, he thought, but couldn’t make himself take on that much of an invasion of privacy. Childermass had trusted him, Segundus rationalised, with the belongings that were on show: He had not given Segundus rein to rummage through his drawers.

Segundus, then, allowed his eyes to travel back to the bookshelves. He spent some minutes flicking through each. When he reached the familiar copy of _How to putte Questiones to the Dark and understand its Answeres_ he smiled a little to himself, remembering how Childermass’ attitude to him had changed during their discussion about it, even when they had still been strangers. His hands were clumsy putting it back, as if they didn’t want to let go of that link, and he managed to dislodge the pack of old playing cards he had noticed during his first visit.

They fell to the floor in a flutter, scattering all over the worn carpet, and Segundus’ heart leapt as he realised that they weren’t playing cards after all. Most of the cards had fallen face-down, but three or four had flipped as they fell and were now looking up at him.

Segundus knew little about prognostication, but he knew enough to recognise tarot cards, if not enough to know what they signified. This deck was different to the ones he had seen before, lacked the garish colours and jolly illustrations. They seemed older, somehow, cruder. They were well-used, with dog-eared corners and the edges worn smooth, almost velvety when Segundus picked them up: the majority of the pack first, then the few which had landed face up.

As he looked at them more closely, he realised that they were handmade. There was no doubting it once he had noticed the pen marks, how some cards had been drawn with different pens: some with proper India ink, others with simple ballpoints which had left scribbled marks showing through the back of the cardboard. They were, however, all doubtlessly drawn by the same hand.

He took the cards back to the couch, laid them down on the coffee table and looked through them more intently. He found suits, although not the ones he had first expected when he had seen a deck of cards. Two were very similar – varying numbers of intercepting lines, one set curved while the other was straight. Another depicted sets of goblets, and the last disks which, looking at the face cards, he decided were supposed to be coins due to the captions of _Roy_ and _Reyne de Deniers_. The others were _Coupes_ , _Batons_ , _Epees_ , and he separated them into their suits.

Once he had done this, there were still a number of cards left over, and these he looked through one by one, fingers tracing over the lines of faces of the characters, their beautiful and horrible situations. He set them out in order of the numbers written at the top of the cards, until he had eighteen of them laid out in front of him with gaps in the arrangement.

Some part of him, a part he could not quite locate when he tried, had decided to keep the four cards that had landed face up during the fall separate. He laid these out beside – but apart from – the rest of the deck, once more in order of their numbers: _VII Le Chariot, X La Rove de Fortune_ , _XIII_ (title unmarked, but the gruesome illustration left Segundus with little doubt as to its name), _XVI La Maison Dieu_.

It was when he was examining these more closely – peering at _La Rove de Fortune_ , trying to figure out what precisely the beasts on the wheel were supposed to be – that the door opened.

“What are you doing?” Childermass’ voice was low, and Segundus felt the coolness of the evening on him as he approached, smelled the breeze on him as he stood beside him. Even with the distance between them, even without looking up at Childermass’ face, Segundus could feel the tension in him.

He had, he realised, overstepped a boundary. He had stepped further into Childermass’ privacy by touching these cards than if he had rifled through his drawers and read his letters. He pushed himself away from the table, clasped his hands in his lap, looked up at the rawness of Childermass’ face as he surveyed the deck arranged over the table: the four suits sitting in separate piles with the Aces on top, the others neatly in a grid, the four extra sitting a little apart.

“I’m sorry,” Segundus said, staying as still as he could. “I was looking at your books and they fell off the shelf – I was curious, I didn’t think-” He cut himself off, because that was the truth of it. He hadn’t thought. He had quite neatly set aside any thought of Childermass in favour of his own nosiness. “You have every right to be angry.”

Childermass was quiet for a long while, and just as Segundus was getting the feeling that he was going to be asked to leave, he let out a loud sigh and sat down heavily, still looking at the cards spread out on the table.

“Why are these ones here?” He asked, touching the corner of _La Maison Dieu_. Segundus explained about the fall, that he had wanted to look more closely at them, and Childermass picked the four cards up and examined them in his hand, shuffling them around in different orders, staring at them with an intensity that Segundus was beginning to recognise. “Do you know anything about them?”

“No,” Segundus said, eyes fixed on the serious lines of Childermass’ profile. “I’ve never looked very deeply at divination.”

Childermass shook his head and laughed a little humourlessly as he gathered up the rest of the deck and set to shuffling them all together again. “Would you like to?” He didn’t turn to Segundus, but his eyes slid to him and Segundus felt his heart leap.

“Yes!” He said, then pulled himself back, remembered why he had been left alone in the first place. “But you said-” he had to put some effort into looking away from Childermass’ hands, which were shuffling the cards with a casual fluency that made his mouth dry, “-you said there was something you needed to speak to me about.”

“So I did,” Childermass said after a moment, and set the cards down with a sigh. He didn’t say anything more, however: only reached towards Segundus’ face and traced his cheekbone with his fingertips.

There were a number of things Segundus wanted to ask him – How had he got on with the boundary spells? Had he found anything more out about the Letters? What did he think their chances truly were with Starecross? – but as he opened his mouth to ask them, he saw the tiredness lining Childermass’ face: the dark smudges beneath his eyes, the weariness in the set of his shoulders, and couldn’t bring himself to voice any of them.

Instead, he leaned forward and kissed him. He wished he could help, could take some of the fatigue from Childermass, but knew he couldn’t. He did what little he could: cupped Childermass’ face in his hands so that he wouldn’t have to support the weight of his head himself, pulled him closer to lend him the heat of his body, and felt the tension in his muscles seep slowly out with each brush of his lips.

“Thank you,” Childermass said, pulling back just far enough to look at him, to push Segundus’ hair away from his forehead.

“When did you get back?” As he asked, he realised he already knew the answer.

“Ten minutes before you got here.”

Childermass stayed there for a long time, just out of reach, his eyes roaming all over Segundus’ face, his thumb absently brushing his cheek, his temple. Segundus felt the heat rising to his cheeks at being regarded so closely, tried to turn his head away, but Childermass caught his chin, turned him back.

“Don’t,” Childermass said, so gently that Segundus had to look back at him. “Will you stay?”

“Of course.” He brought his hand up to cover Childermass’, intertwining their fingers.

It was unfair, so damned unfair, that Childermass had to put up with all this travelling, all this tiredness. Segundus pulled him through to the bedroom, undressed him slowly, pulled him down beneath the covers. He pulled Childermass’ head onto his chest, stroked his hair as his eyes closed and his breathing evened out, and wished he could do something more. He closed his own eyes, let the weight and warmth of Childermass anchor him.

He knew the shape of Childermass’ fatigues by heart: the bags – even darker than usual – that appeared livid below his eyes when his journeys allowed him only the bare minimum of sleep; the stiffness in his back when he had been riding for too long and had to be cajoled into a warm bath; the slump to his shoulders when an outing had proved worse than useless; the knot between his brows when some gentleman had refused to hear him out because of his clothes or his accent.

So Segundus did what he had always done, all that he could do – rubbed the knots from his tight muscles, smoothed the wrinkle from his brow with his thumb, urged him to sleep in a proper bed – all the while wishing it was more.

 


	13. Chapter 13

The night before they had arranged to meet Hannah, Segundus stayed with Childermass.

They spoke little. Segundus found the he couldn’t settle – his blood buzzed in his ears, loud and electric – so he paced around the small flat, picking up books and putting them down again as quickly, tidying the kitchen, checking the contents of his bag for the fortieth time to make sure he had everything they needed for the morning. He felt as though he were standing on the edge of a precipice, looking down into a darkness in which he could distinguish nothing. Time felt short, had been growing shorter all week like a thread being wound tighter and tighter around a spool. There was, in his guts and in his bones, a feeling that the spool was about to be dropped and unwound entirely.

There seemed to be a similar unease in Childermass, a restlessness that left him quiet as he sat shuffling and laying out his cards again and again, seemingly never satisfied with the answer. There was something at once nerve-wracking and soothing about watching him at this - the fluency of his shuffling and dealing combined with the deepening frown on his face.

“What are you asking them?” Segundus asked, when he became worried that Childermass’ stare would set the cards alight. He thought he knew the answer, but felt he ought to ask, ought to speak and break the silence that was growing too big and too thick for the small flat.

“What tomorrow will bring.” Childermass shuffled the deck again, laid the cards out in a slightly different formation and proceeded to turn them over one by one. His expression remained unreadable, and Segundus stopped his pacing to sit down beside him and look at the cards.

“And what do they say?”

Childermass pulled one card from the spread and slid it in front of Segundus. On it, three beasts of indecipherable species rode a wheel, all looking peculiarly pleased with themselves. _La Rove de Fortune_ , the caption at the bottom read.

“Change is coming,” Childermass said, and pulled another three cards from the deck. They were all familiar to Segundus’ eyes, although he was too ignorant of the art to make much of them. “These keep turning up, time and again. Whatever we find tomorrow, I don’t think there’s any coming back from it.” He sighed deeply and gathered the cards together, setting the pile at the edge of the table. “But I think we’ve both known that for a while.”

He looked Segundus in the eye, direct and unruffled and everything that Segundus needed to see. He seemed older than his years in that instant, wiser than Segundus had ever hoped to be, but there was something comforting about that. Segundus only hoped he was proving as comforting in return.

*

They woke up early, in time to see the dawn of early summer, and packed what little they needed into Segundus’ satchel: two compact mirrors, their notebooks, a small spool of scarlet ribbon for emergencies.

Brewer seemed even louder than usual in the grey dawn light, and as they sped out of the city and north into the moors Segundus was increasingly glad they had decided to leave the bike some distance from the village. Such a noise would definitely draw attention to them and, even more undesirably, to Hannah.

Childermass pulled off of the small single track road, parking the bike just beyond a passing place, and they walked the last couple of miles to the village over the moors. The morning was dull and cool, the light tinted a peculiar yellow that put Segundus slightly in mind of the end of the world, a feeling not helped by the bank of even darker clouds building on the western horizon.

The rain kept itself at bay for their walk over the moors, a different route than Segundus had followed when he had visited, as Childermass led them to the centre of the village rather than directly to the school.

When they reached the post-box, Hannah was waiting for them, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt under a tabard with the Starecross crest embroidered on the chest, her hair pulled back in a simple plait. She smiled tightly at them and jerked her head for them to follow her.

Segundus felt so nervous during the short walk to the main building, so overwhelmed by the silence of their small party, that he almost wanted to ask the birds to give up their dawn chorus because he feared they might give them away.

Soon, they were as close as Segundus had ever got: facing off against the blinking light of a keypad. The building was dark, no lights warming the cold morning. Hannah punched in a four-digit number and opened the door for them, slipping in after them to punch another code into an alarm box to put an end to the frantic beeping it was emitting. She shook Segundus’ hand, kissed Childermass on the cheek, and left them in the dim hallway, off to go about her duties as normal.

The first thing Segundus noticed once they were on their own was that Childermass was much more adept at sneaking than he was. He seemed to blend into the shadows almost completely, and his footsteps were silent. Segundus even looked down at his feet to make sure he hadn’t changed out of his heavy boots. Segundus kept behind him, figuring it was best to stay close if Childermass was able to avoid the creaking floorboards so easily. This decision didn’t last long, as when they turned the corner Segundus was brought to a standstill, transfixed.

“Oh my,” he breathed. The sun had broken through the clouds, and pink light now flooded through the vast bank of windows, casting strange shapes and colours on the wood panelling behind him. He felt bathed in it, and closed his eyes. He spread out his arms at his sides and felt every inch of his body the light touched tingling with warmth. It was telling him something, or asking him, or sighing, he wasn’t sure which, but he felt the sunlight’s attempts at communication and welcomed it.

 _Yes_ , he thought at it, _I’m glad to see you too_.

It crawled under his skin, made its home in his bones. He breathed it out and watched it swirl in the air and twine around the railing of the passage above them like a vine. He felt his grin aching in his cheeks. He felt as if there were two of him pressed into this one human body and he was about to burst out of it. He felt, in short, surrounded by magic. It wasn't the pulse of magic being practised, but the stones of the building radiating the energy they had absorbed over the centuries, like boulders in the summer that remain warm hours after dark, the patina that grows layer by layer on a beloved chair.

He only had a minute to bask in it, to see Childermass’ astonished face, before the alarms went off.

Childermass cursed harshly and impressively, and grabbed his arm to pull him into the shadows under the stairs. They waited there for a minute, maybe two, although it was hard to judge time passing because his heart was thumping in his throat and his breath was afraid to come, before they heard the thud of footsteps on the wooden floor above them and the dust fell from the stairs onto their heads. Childermass’ hand tightened around his arm, and he was aware they were both holding their breath. His pulse was a hammer-blow at his jaw. He felt a flicker of familiar magic at his elbow, as if Childermass had a spell at his fingertips but was uncertain whether to cast it.

Segundus nearly jumped out of his skin and just managed to stifle a shriek when the woman appeared in front of them, her arms crossed and her foot tapping on the flagstone floor. It was, Segundus realised after a moment, Professor Alice Hickman, the Chancellor of Starecross. She looked at them steadily, her lips pressed into a thin, unimpressed line, and dropped her hands to her hips, looking very different from the pictures Segundus had seen of her in the newspapers. For a start, he had yet to see a picture of her in pyjamas.

“Well, I knew this would happen sooner or later. I’d hoped it wouldn’t be when I was in charge, though. Come on out.” She heaved a great sigh and jerked her head towards the hall. They stayed where they were, staring at her. “Oh just hurry up. I'll get the kettle on.” She turned on her heel and strode off without waiting to see if they would follow.

“Did you expect that?” Segundus whispered to Childermass.

“Not in the least,” he answered, and they followed Professor Hickman through to a small office.

She pointed at them to sit on two chairs on one side of a tidy, modern desk, while she busied herself with a kettle in the corner. She set a cup of tea in front of each of them (which neither of them touched), and then sat behind the desk, facing them with narrowed eyes. She looked at them each in turn for a few long minutes, treatment that Childermass put up with better than Segundus did. He looked away from her, at the large fireplace behind her, and fancied he saw a rosebush climbing up the wall, barren of flowers and leaves but with wicked thorns still glinting. The colour had worn itself out, and he realised he was looking at an echo. He blinked and it was gone. He looked back at Hickman, and managed to hold her gaze this time.

She sighed again and sat back in her chair, putting her hands on her head and looking up at the ceiling. “I suppose I’d best take you to him.” She sounded resigned rather than angry, which was so opposite to the reaction Segundus had expected that he found himself opening and closing his mouth dumbly.

“You’re… not going to call the police?” Segundus winced at the squeak in his voice, and again when Childermass kicked his ankle and shot him a glare.

“What would be the point? We knew you were coming. We’ve known for years.”

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t realise I was coming until last Friday.” Childermass kicked him again.

“It’ll be easier just to show you. Follow me.”

So she stood and walked from the room. The two men followed her down a maze of corridors and stairs. It was like the house, having been built, had decided it wasn’t quite how it would like to be and had kept growing by itself, following as much of human building plans as an oak tree or a bramble bush would. Segundus felt the dizzy sensation that he knew where she was going, that he had walked this route before. He smelled dusty, dead roses and saw more thorns on the walls as they went, pale and washed out, like a projection. He wanted to sneeze.

Hickman stopped in front of a door that looked no different from the rest of the doors they had passed, and knocked. No sound came from the room, so she sighed and knocked again, harder this time.

“You have some visitors, sir!” She shouted, and Segundus wondered who on earth she would have to call “ _sir_ ”, or who else would be staying on campus during the holidays.

The door opened a crack, and Segundus felt a sense of vertigo wash over him as strong magic radiated out. He looked beside him and saw Childermass had braced himself with a hand on the wall, the colour gone from his face. An eye peeked out at them from the gap in the door: pale and somehow unspeakably ancient. There was a great deal of scraggly hair above and below the eye. The door closed again and a thin voice called out, “I’m not ready!”

Hickman looked at them and seemed, of all things, apologetic. “He can be difficult.” She hammered on the door with her fist this time.

After a minute of this, the door opened wide and revealed a thin, haggard looking man of about seventy. He had a long, thin face with a long, thin nose, and long, thin hair hanging from his head to past his shoulders. He scratched at his equally long beard while he looked them up and down.

“They started calling me ‘sir’ about a hundred years ago, I reckon,” he said. “I quite enjoy it, though it’s a habit _you_ never got into.”

“Excuse me?” Childermass said, his eyebrows rising slowly up his forehead.

Segundus heard all of this as if from a distance. He was too busy staring at the man. He had a dressing gown pulled around himself, but Segundus could see the network of magic running around him under the fabric, obvious over his face and head. He felt the ghost of a headache and hands at his temples, and when he blinked he was back looking at the strange man in his dressing gown, and Hickman was striding into the room, gesturing for them to follow.

“What’s going on?” He managed to battle through the mix of confusion and magic clouding his mind to ask. He looked around the room, which seemed to be an apartment with a sitting room, a small kitchen, and a door through which he could see an unmade bed. The windowsill was lined with empty wine bottles.

“Oh, it’s simple really,” Hickman said, settling down into an armchair by a large window. “Your… _predecessors_ put so many spells of protection and preservation on him to save the Book that it seems to have made him more or less immortal.”

“Thank you, sirs.” There was more than a pinch of irony in the man’s voice.

“Our…” Segundus trailed off and shook his head, but it did nothing to clear it. His mouth felt very dry. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Why have you not thrown us out?”

“You were smarter last time I saw you,” the stringy man said. He tilted his head in consideration. “Greyer, too. More wrinkles back then. You,” he turned to Childermass, “are just as ugly as I remember.”

“I say!” Segundus said, offended on Childermass’ behalf, but when he looked at him, Childermass was just watching the man with an inscrutable gaze. He seemed to be looking at him through one eye, then very slowly closing it and opening the other. He blinked heavily and shook his head, a deep frown descending on his features.

“You,” Childermass said slowly, looking to Hickman quickly before turning his eyes back to the man, “are the King’s Book.”

The man’s face split into a feral grin, showing a mouthful of rotten teeth and more than one gap. “You always were the sharpest!” He cackled, pointing a bony finger at Childermass.

“Vinculus?” Segundus gasped, his mind finally steering through his confusion. “But that’s impossible, you must be-”

“Two hundred and twenty-six years old! Give or take.” He sighed. “And I’ve been stuck in here for the last hundred and fifty, no thanks to you two.”

“I… I’m sorry, but I don’t see what I’ve got to do with anything. I’m twenty-five, I could hardly have…”

“You think I don’t remember your face, John Segundus? I thought you knew I was sharper than that.” He laughed: a high, manic sound that raised the hair on Segundus’ neck.

“How do you know my name?” Even as he asked, the suspicion that he already knew was creeping up his spine.

“For pity’s sake,” Vinculus said, rolling his eyes and looking towards Hickman. “Spell it out for him, would you?”

“You’re the one it’s spelt out on,” she shot back.

He blew a raspberry at her and stood, spreading his arms out for his recital:  
“ _The darkness will take two, two more will follow in time.  
__Reader and Page will return anew and afresh, a second spring  
__They will come as the bell-heather blooms  
__And show themselves in a shower of golden light.  
__Time will be water in their hands, but they will know as much of it as the beaker.  
__I will hand them the keys to my kingdom, stone and rain,  
__And from that door they will bring forth Fearfulness and Arrogance.”_ Vinculus gave a short, mocking kind of bow. “Says so right on my arse.”

“He means you were foretold,” Hickman said, shooting Vinculus a dirty look. “And it’s actually written on his right shoulder blade.”

“That’s impossible,” Childermass said. “No one’s been able to translate more than a word or two in a hundred and fifty years.” His eyes narrowed as he looked between Hickman and Vinculus.

“You did, John Childermass,” Vinculus said, his voice taking on a sing-song quality that was not entirely pleasant. “You translated that yourself, and quite pleased with yourself you were, too.” He looked at Segundus and sniffed. “Well, he helped a bit I suppose.”

“Why is this not known?” Childermass asked, looking to Hickman now, his rough voice growing heated. “People have been arguing over this for nearly two centuries! How much more of him’s been translated but not released?”

“This is intellectual vandalism!” Segundus cried. Hickman held up her hands to stop their onslaught.

“It wasn’t my doing.” She sighed, which she seemed to be doing a lot, and rubbed her temples. “I don’t know how to explain it. My best guess, and the guess of my predecessors in this post – and there has been a lot of discussion over the years – is that there has been some form of… of reincarnation.” Childermass gave a snort and crossed his arms. “It was John Childermass who made certain the prophecy would remain secret,” Hickman continued as if Childermass hadn't made a sound. “By all accounts, he realised what it was and what it meant and said that prophecies meant nothing but trouble, and if they're going to happen anyway there's no use spreading them. Even in 1825 there were people going around claiming to be Strange or Norrell returned, which no doubt led to his decision. Can you imagine the public clamour if there were _four_ magicians predicted to return?”

Segundus had studied the accounts of some of those charlatans and could imagine it quite well. He frowned at Vinculus and pressed a knuckle to his lips. There was something about the magic that surrounded him, a flavour of peat smoke and heather, old books and lavender… The longer he sat near the man, the more used he got to the magic, the less oppressive it seemed. It was tight and strong, but not as suffocating as it had been on first exposure.

“I was instructed to give you these,” Hickman said, startling him out of his reverie.

When he looked up she was holding a letter out to him, addressed to him in an old fashioned handwriting and sealed with a stamp of a tree growing from an open book in red wax, a raven taking flight from the tree. The paper felt brittle, and seemed to vibrate in his hands, although it may well just have been him shaking. He glanced over at Childermass, saw him looking down at a similar letter, although the writing on his seemed to be from a different hand, one that was familiar to Segundus, a more fanciful version of something he had seen before.

“I’ll leave you to read them.” She stood, and jerked her head at Vinculus. “It’ll be interesting to finally find out what they say.” She left the room, taking Vinculus with her.

“I feel like I've been here before,” Childermass said once she had gone, his voice so low as to be almost inaudible. His thumb brushed over the writing on the front of the envelope, and Segundus thought he saw it tremble. As the door shut behind Hickman and Vinculus, he moved from his indolent slouch in the chair to sitting forward, looking intently at the letter. “Like I know what this is going to say.”

He caught Segundus’ eye and held it for a long moment. They opened their letters together.

Segundus’ was dated November 1830.

_I am uncertain how to address this, so I hope you will forgive how impersonal it may seem. I have left this letter in the care of Starecross School, to be given to you when it seems you have arrived. The prophecy is vague, as is their nature, so I do not know when you will appear or how – I only know that it will be after I am gone. That, at least, we can be certain of._

_I do not know how much you will remember, whether you will start where I left off, or whether you will be unaware of anything but your own experiences. For your own sake, I hope it is the latter. I do not wish to think what a life overshadowed with such a thing as this would be. If it has been the former, I can only offer my condolences and my wish that things could have turned out differently – although you are probably already aware of that._

_I apologise that so much of this is beyond my knowledge. Mr Childermass and I have worked long and hard on trying to figure out as much as we can. I hope it does not come across as overly self-involved, to read a prophecy and decide it relates to oneself, but it is the only sense we can make of it. Childermass is the Reader, we know, and we believe I am the Page. Not Page as in book, but because Mr Childermass tells me I am often represented as the Page of Cups in his cards._

_There have been many considerations taken into the decision to write these letters, to keep this prophecy hidden. We thought about it for many years, and did not come to our conclusion lightly. Prophecies, you see, have a way of coming to pass whether anyone knows of them or not. It seemed safer not to release that particular part of translation to the public – particularly not after the furore that surrounded the disappearance of Messrs Norrell and Strange._

_As for your involvement, there is a spell which was translated alongside the prophecy. We believe this will bring our memories back to you, if you have been without them thus far._

_For the final decision, we thought it best to leave it to you. The spell and the articles needed for it have been left in the care of the same person – or persons – as this letter. You may read the spell and find out its effects before making your decision. I feel I can give no further advice, as I do not wish to pressure you into a decision one way or the other. I can only hope that, whatever decision you make, you make with your whole heart and mind._

_It is a strange thing, to write a letter to oneself, particularly when one will have no memory of its content upon the reading. I hope you will forgive any peculiarities._

_Your humble servant,_

_John Segundus_

 

By the time Segundus had finished reading the letter, his pulse was reduced to a light, hurried thing at his throat that somehow also roared in his ears. Childermass, when Segundus looked at him, was pale as a sheet, his hands trembling so the letter shook in his grip.

“This… This is…” Childermass rubbed his face, digging the heels of his hands against his eyes.

“Mine says that I’m the Page, that he believes it because-”

“The cards,” Childermass sighed and slumped back in his chair, hands still over his eyes. “Aye.” He lowered his hands and looked at Segundus with an expression of such desolate apology that Segundus’ heart wrenched in his chest. “That’s how you usually show up in my readings.” He smiled sadly and shook his head, the breath puffing from his nose.

They swapped letters, and it was only as he read Childermass’ that the reality of it all started to sink in. Childermass’ letter gave more or less the same information that Segundus’ had, but even through the old-fashioned language, the feel of it was so _Childermass_ that he had to laugh a little. The language, like the handwriting itself, was a richer version of the voice and writing he knew so fondly.

“Do you believe it?” Childermass asked, his eyes halfway to a joke.

“I’d rather not,” Segundus answered, drawing it out as he thought about it, “but this doesn’t leave much room for argument.”

“Many people dream of having some great destiny, you know.”

Segundus crossed to Childermass’ chair, crouched in front of him to look him in the eye. “Are you one of those people?”

Childermass frowned, pressing his thumb to his lower lip and gazing over Segundus’ shoulder.

“In a way.” He spoke slowly, as if the words were forming on his tongue as he spoke them. “I suppose, but not in the way you mean.” His eyes flicked back to Segundus, a sardonic smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “I want to make a contribution to the world – I don’t want fame or fortune, particularly – it would be enough to know that I’ve changed things for the better, even by a little. But prophecy?” He sighed, took Segundus’ hand in his own and squeezed. “I don’t much like the idea that I’ve ever been anything other than the master of my own fate.”

“I suppose that’s what they tried to spare us, keeping it hidden.” Segundus bit his lip and looked at their joined hands. His heart was beating in a way that he felt he ought to be worried about, his head buzzing with everything that was impossible but was, somehow, happening. He could still smell dried roses, feel the dry rasp of old paper under his hands, hear the rain pattering against the thin window panes. It was all pushed away temporarily when Childermass closed his eyes and leaned forward until their foreheads rested together.

They were silent for some minutes, each of them trying to absorb the truth of the situation, what the prophecy might mean.

“Vinculus,” Segundus said, breaking the quiet as he gazed into the middle distance at something he couldn’t quite make out. “Did you see the magic on him? He’s so wrapped in it I can see the fabric of it all around him, like he’s wearing the mesh of it.”

“I see something, but not that,” Childermass said, and, pulling away, looked to the door. “It’s like looking at a double-exposed picture, like there are two of him. The first looks to be in his… sixties? Seventies?” He looked to Segundus for backing, and got a nod. “The other,” he shuddered a little. “The other is ancient – skin hanging from bones, white hair like cobwebs. I suppose that’s what the magic’s disguising.”

“The soul ages separately from the body,” Segundus thought aloud.

“That’s what you said before.” Vinculus was looking at him with a sharp eye.

Segundus hadn’t heard the door open, hadn’t heard Vinculus and Hickman return. He stood, took a step back from Childermass.

“What’s the verdict?” Hickman asked, looking between them, arms crossed but something keen in her gaze.

Segundus looked back down at Childermass, saw the deep frown on his face. After a moment, Childermass got to his feet and slowly, deliberately turned to regard Hickman with his heavy eyes. Her posture changed, her back seemed to straighten a little, although she kept her arms crossed.

“Give us a week,” Childermass said, voice slow and deep as thunder.

“It’s a lot to take in, I suppose.” Hickman looked between them. “Take the letters, think about it. We’ve waited over a hundred years, a week won’t make much of a difference in the long run, I wouldn’t think.” She stepped forward, handed them each a card. “When you’ve made your decision, have any questions, give me a ring.” She raised an imperious eyebrow at them. “It’s rather more convenient for everyone than breaking in at arse o’clock on a Sunday morning.”

“Erm, thank you.” Segundus said, feeling the heat rising to his cheeks as he twiddled the card in his hands. “Sorry for the… the inconvenience.”

They took the letters and followed Hickman back to the front door, and out into the morning air.

 


	14. Chapter 14

It was too much to take in. Segundus had known he would find something, but had never imagined it would be so much, so important. His head was swimming at the end of the three hours they had spent with Hickman, and only part of that was due to the magic emanating from Vinculus, wrapped around him so tightly.

Vinculus, who knew them, who recognised them. Vinculus who was impossibly old, impossibly alive. He had known they would find something at Starecross, but he had certainly never thought it would be that: the King’s Book alive and well and kept at the top of an ivory tower.

The sun was fully up and shining as they left, and the garden seemed to realise that something had changed. As Segundus ran his hand absently over the hornbeam hedge, it almost felt as though it leaned towards him in greeting.

The silence was thick as they walked to the other end of the village, Segundus thinking of the letter in his coat pocket, Childermass’ face etched in a deep frown. More than once Segundus saw him pat his breast pocket with a sigh.

As they reached the village proper, Childermass asked, “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“I didn’t think you did,” Segundus answered, unable now to be surprised by anything. “But go ahead.”

Childermass stepped into the small newsagent on the corner and emerged a few moments later with a packet of cigarettes and a lighter, his fingers already working to open the packet. He took a cigarette between his lips then silently extended the packet to Segundus. He hadn’t smoked in years – had always been more of a social smoker than a habitual one – but he felt he might need something to help calm the tremor that had started in his left hand.

“Thank you,” he said as he took one, and leaned into Childermass’ cupped hands to catch the spark of the lighter. He closed his eyes as he inhaled, held his breath for a moment, and let the smoke out in a long, slow breath. When he opened them again, Childermass was leaning against the wall of the shop, head tilted back as he watched the smoke swirl and rise into the air.

“Christ,” Childermass said, and shook his head. “I haven’t had one of these in seven years.”

Segundus didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. His mind was such a frantic jumble of thoughts and memories and maybe-memories that his cigarette had burned halfway down before he realised. He tapped the ash off and smoked the last inch of it while Childermass finished his, eyes narrowed on the bleak horizon of the moors.

There wasn’t anything to say, he supposed, not yet. He tried to rationalise the morning, to set it out in some order in his mind, to think if he had ever read anything about something similar, but all his mind could dredge up was the pallor of Childermass’ face and the tight weave of magic surrounding Vinculus and his ancient, ancient eyes.

They walked back across the moors to Brewer in silence. As they passed a hawthorn tree, a raven croaked out a harsh laugh that Segundus felt was directed at them personally. The lapwings cried across the vast expanse, and they seemed to call out “ _bewitched, bewitched”_.

“Do you want…” Segundus said as he took his helmet off outside Lady Peckett’s yard, handed it back to Childermass, but wasn’t sure how to continue.

Before he could catch up with his thoughts, Childermass shook his head and looked at him with tired, heavy eyes.

“No,” he said in a great sigh. “I need to… I don’t rightly know what I need to do, but I must think.”

“I understand,” Segundus said. In his breast there was a war waging between two distinct parts of himself: the one he knew well that thrived on quiet study and reflection that wanted him to shut himself away to calm down and examine all this rationally, and a newer part that currently felt like a piece of driftwood being tossed around a violent sea and wanted only to cling to the solid presence of Childermass for comfort. He dismissed this second idea as childish and unhelpful, and stood back from the bike.

Childermass looked at him for a moment, his expression complicated, and nodded before pulling away up the street with a roar of throttle.

Segundus stood at the side of the road for some time before taking himself down the snicket to Mrs Pleasance’s door. He called out to his landlady, and when he got no reply he made his way upstairs. He found himself looking in the bathroom mirror at his pale face and was surprised to see that he was crying.

He shook his head sharply and told himself not to be so ridiculous, washed his face, and scrubbed dry with his hard towel. Once he was sitting at his desk with time to sort through all that had happened he would feel better, he told himself.

He sat, took out the notebook that had taken him to Starecross in the first place, the one he had filled with the symbols that crowded around the margins and over Vinculus’ skin, and as the memory of that morning swam back up to the surface, the glint in Vinculus’ pale eyes, the network of magic bound densely around him, Segundus found that his pen was shaking in his hand and the line he had just written was illegible. With a deep breath, he shook himself hard and bent once more to his task, setting out the events of the morning and all the thoughts that had been pushing in from all sides since.

He looked over his work once he felt he had captured everything that had happened, and almost didn’t recognise the events as having happened to him. He had spilled his mind over pages and pages – an activity that usually helped him settle jangled nerves and sort through his thoughts – but he found that he still felt unsure and restless. It was a deep disconcertion, one he tried to grasp and label, but every time he made a grab it backed away or slipped through his fingers.

Shutting the book, he pulled on his coat and left the house with no clear idea of what his destination was. A few minutes later, he found himself standing in front of the closed doors of the public library, blankly reading the sign relaying the opening hours as he remembered it was still Sunday. The morning seemed a very long time ago.

Instead, he walked the city walls, the ancient stone cool against his hand as he trailed his fingers along the rough surface. He thought of the stone, the heaviness and the oldness of it, the colour not quite as white as its cousin in the cathedral. He heard the rumbling of that stone, heard it in the form of petrified voices grinding out words like millstones turning out flour.

Had he seen that? Was it truly a memory, or was the strangeness of the morning merely playing tricks on his mind?

He walked, and he walked, until the early summer sun turned the city wall bloodstained and the cathedral pink and luminous as it reached up, striving, to the sky. His legs ached, and he was dimly aware that he was hungry, although he had no great desire to actually eat. Anything he put in his mouth would, he knew, turn to sawdust as soon as it passed his lips.

The city was warm and lively as he wandered back to Lady Peckett’s Yard, people out making the most of the weather and the last night of the weekend. Someone shouted his name, and he turned to see Suzanne in the middle of a group of girls outside a pub, passing around a lighter and laughing. She said something he couldn’t make out over the garble of voices, so he just smiled and raised his hand in greeting, and continued on down the road.

Mrs Pleasance told him that George Honeyfoot had called for him at lunch, then admonished him for looking so tired and forced a plate of ham and chips in front of him, which he barely touched. She sat frowning at him as he stared at his plate and ate a few chips. After a valiant attempt, he explained that he wasn’t feeling well and took himself back to his room to read the letter that had been written to him generations ago.

Despite the exhaustion that had sunk into his bones which felt as if it would reside there forever, he found he could not sleep. He lay staring at his ceiling for hours, mapping the cracks in the plaster and the ingenious architecture of the spiders spinning from beam to beam. Around one o’clock he reached for his Walkman, unable to stand the silence throbbing around him, unable to ignore the echoes of Vinculus’ voice in his mind.

So he lay watching the shadows shift over the ceiling, letting the soft crooning of _Lilac Wine_ through his headphones lull him to something approaching peace. He closed his eyes but remained awake. As he listened to Buckley’s soaring, lamenting voice, it washed over him. He felt the tingle of it like magic coming closer, could sense the spiders above him pausing their weaving in anticipation. It was only towards the end of the song when he felt an evening breeze that didn’t come from his open city-centre window that he realised that he _was_ sensing magic. It was coming from somewhere below, but coming closer. It thrummed at the small of his back, climbing up his spine and pulling the hair on his neck and arms to stand on end.

In the moment the song ended, in the hissing silence as the cassette wound on to the next track, he heard a creak from outside his door. He was sitting up, his headphones around his neck before the knock sounded, barely audible in the still night.

Standing shakily, he made his way gently across the room, avoiding the squeaking floorboard. The door opened, and although his hand was on the handle he had no memory of pulling it, and he had a sense of _Childermass_ although he didn’t immediately see him.

A sensation came, a sound, the clap and rustle of a bird taking flight over the tinny guitar still issuing from his headphones, and Childermass seemed to step out of the shadows towards him.

Segundus was, for a moment, afraid. He felt as though he were dreaming, or no longer quite in his body. He would look back to the bed, he was sure, and see himself still lying upon it.

But then Childermass said, “John,” in a strained voice and touched his shoulder, and Segundus was jerked back to himself, to the reality of Childermass in his room in the middle of the night.

“Did you break in?” It wasn’t quite what he had meant to ask, but he couldn’t quite think what else to say.

“Not technically,” Childermass replied, his long smile stretching up one side of his face but jarring with the look in his eyes. “Nothing’s broken, don’t worry.”

“How-?”

“Misspent youth,” Childermass said, dry humour smoothing the edges of his voice, and stepped closer. Segundus didn’t step back this time, felt his heart returning to something approaching its normal rhythm. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said, serious this time.

“So you thought you would come and wake me?” Although he had to cross his arms to hide his trembling hands, a smile tugged at the corner of Segundus’ mouth.

“I can see you were getting on well with that.” Childermass flicked the headphones around Segundus’ neck with a fingernail as they continued to wail small, distorted versions of songs that sounded so different away from his ears.

“Do you always have to be right?” Segundus asked, smiling just a little now. The restlessness that had been roaming under his skin since that morning was subsiding little by little.

“I don’t have to be, I just happen to be.” A joke danced for a moment in Childermass’ eyes, lit by the yellow light of Segundus’ bedside lamp. “Tell me to go and I will. I just needed…” He trailed off, looked at the curtains pulled across the small window, something uncertain crouching in him now.

Segundus thought he might know what it was, that uncertainty; he felt it hiding between his own lungs. He reached out, caught Childermass’ hand, said, “John,” and pulled him towards him. He took Childermass’ face between his palms and tilted his head down to kiss him on the forehead.

“I can’t stop thinking about it.” His hands came to rest at Segundus’ waist, warm and solid. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

“I know.” It had been raging through him all day, all night. He had hoped that being alone would help the thoughts settle, let him concentrate on them and dismantle them into some semblance of order, but nothing had helped. He knew the letter almost by heart now, but nothing had helped him make sense of it. “It’s alright.”

He finally pulled the headphones from his neck, stopped the tape, and left the Walkman in a tangle of wires on his desk. When he turned, Childermass had sat at the edge of the bed, hands clasped as if in a lazy prayer between his knees, eyes fixed on him. Segundus walked to him, tilted his chin up with a finger, and kissed him.

It was slow, almost tentative, just a slow push-and-pull of lips as everything was re-evaluated. It was the resistance he had been missing all day, when everything else had been slipping past him. Segundus knelt between Childermass’ knees, not breaking the kiss, and Childermass’ hands slipped into his hair, anchoring firm but not pulling. Childermass’ thighs were tense under his hands, so he squeezed a little and felt him relax just a little under the touch, felt the relief in his exhale.

“I wasn’t sure if you would…” Childermass started in a whisper. “It might have been too strange.”

“It is, a little,” he admitted, pulling back just far enough to see the shine of Childermass’ dark eyes. It was strange, it couldn’t be anything else given all they had learned, but it was certainly the least strange thing that had happened all day.

“If you don’t want this, I’ll understand, just-”

“Oh, do be quiet.” Segundus laughed against Childermass’ lips, felt the bite of teeth as a response. Childermass made a low noise against his lips, and pulled back just far enough that Segundus could feel his lips move but not hear the words he was reciting.

The pressure he had felt earlier at the base of his spine returned, spilling up his body as he pulled back to watch the concentration on Childermass’ face: brows drawn together, eyes closed, lips moving in silent shapes like a prayer. Segundus felt again the breeze, smelled peat and rain and the full sweet scent of pipe tobacco.

Every hair on his body stood up as Childermass’ magic washed over him, played through his hair and flowed up the walls, twisted over the door like blossoming vines. The sensation of it stole the breath from him, sent heat spiralling in his guts as Childermass’ lips fell still and his eyes opened, regarding Segundus with a heavy gaze.

Segundus surged up and kissed him urgently, twisting a hand in his hair, certain that it must have hurt but unable to stop himself. Childermass didn’t complain, didn’t push him away, just grasped his shoulders and pulled him closer, bending over him.

“What,” Segundus gasped, pulling back for breath but unwilling to go too far, nudging his nose against Childermass’. “What was that?”

“A spell for silence,” Childermass said, his beard scraping against Segundus’ cheek. “I didn’t think your landlady would appreciate the noise at this hour.”

Segundus laughed, a little deliriously, and kissed him again. He found that as long as he was kissing Childermass he didn’t have to worry about who he was – if he were truly himself or just some vessel for someone else entirely – and could just be the man kissing John Childermass, the man pressing him back onto the mattress and kissing down his chest.

He was hungry, he realised – for the warmth of him, the taste of him. Childermass smelt of cigarettes, which didn’t seem quite right (warmer, Segundus thought it should be, sweeter), and he bit at Segundus’ lips while his hands pushed at his pyjamas and Segundus scrabbled at his belt buckle, at the fly of his jeans. He shoved Childermass’ trousers down his thighs as quickly as he could, desperate suddenly for the touch of his skin. He tried to pull them off completely, but Childermass was still wearing his boots so they caught around his ankles, unable to go any further. It didn’t matter – Segundus ducked his head and took Childermass into his mouth, pulling a startled grunt from him as he lay back, his hands clutching in Segundus’ hair, grasping at his shoulders.

It wasn’t long before Childermass tugged on his hair, pulled him away and up for a loose, messy kiss, his hand wrapping around them both between their bodies. This was what he had needed, Segundus realised, as the heat coursing through his blood burned away the restlessness and worry that had plagued him all day. He had needed Childermass against him, pushing up against him through the confusion of their clothing in his narrow bed.

It was fast, and rough, neither of them completely undressed by the time Segundus came with a ragged gasp, when Childermass arched his back to the ceiling with his jeans still snagged around his ankles, his t-shirt pushed up under his armpits.

When he had come back to himself, Segundus slipped down to the end of the bed and removed Childermass’ boots, gently eased his trousers off and onto the floor. When he glanced back up the bed, Childermass had propped himself up on an elbow and was looking down at him with an expression he couldn’t quite decipher. He looked away from the intensity of it, pressed a kiss to Childermass’ ankle, to his knee, his hip, his ribs, up until he reached his mouth.

“I should-” Childermass started, looking down at him with a strange, conflicted expression.

“No, you shouldn’t,” Segundus interrupted, biting at Childermass’ lip. “Please,” he said, the strange flavour of despair he had been wallowing in all day rising in his throat. “I couldn’t bear it.”

“But your landlady…” Childermass began, but his hand came up to stroke at Segundus’ temple.

“My landlady won’t mind, I’m certain. If she does, she’ll be out by ten.” He brought his hands either side of Childermass’ face and kissed him with all the tenderness he could muster. Childermass sighed and lowered himself back down, pulling Segundus with him.

The single bed in Mrs Pleasance’s garret was much smaller than Childermass’ own, so Segundus had to tangle their legs together and press himself against Childermass’ side so they would fit. Soft lips bumped against his temple, warm arms wrapped around his shoulders, and he sighed. The pressure of Childermass against him, the steadiness of his heartbeat and his breathing eased the current that had been itching under Segundus’ skin; the breath tickling his ear was a balm upon the confusion and uncertainty he had been stumbling through all day.

He came closer to sleep than he had all night, but just as he was about to slip away, the question was out of his mouth before he could stop it.

“Do you think they…” Segundus couldn’t finish the thought, had to laugh that it had even occurred to him.

“Do I think what?” Childermass asked, but the teasing tone in his voice told Segundus that he knew quite well what he had meant.

“John Childermass and John Segundus,” he expanded, his heart fluttering quite ridiculously in his chest as he did so. “Do you think they were like us?” He pressed his hand to Childermass’ chest, just above his heart to feel the slow steady thud of it.

“Neither of them ever married,” Childermass said, pulling Segundus tighter against him, nudging his nose against his ear. “They were friends until Childermass’ death.” Hearing him say it so bluntly, Segundus shivered. “What does it matter? We are what we are, they were what they were. Whatever the truth of all this, our lives have been our own so far. I’m not interested in… validating my existence all over again, just because of this.”

“You’re not curious?” Segundus propped himself up to look down at Childermass, at the wry smile that spread across his face.

“Aye, of course I am.” He reached up, followed the shape of Segundus’ eyebrow with the very tips of his fingers. “But I’m not going to let it change what we’ve got here.”

His hand slipped into Segundus’ hair, pulled him down for a slow kiss, pressed him tight to his chest. Segundus let himself melt against him, too tired to resist even if he had wanted to. He pulled away slowly, suddenly overcome, and laid his head on Childermass’ chest to finally, finally close his eyes.


	15. Chapter 15

Things seemed clearer in the morning light. The sound of the city rumbling into action was familiar, and as he got ready for work Segundus tried to pay attention to the noise of it, but ended up unsure if his mind was playing tricks on him when he wondered why he couldn’t hear the clop of hooves on cobbles. He shook his head and washed his face, silently reprimanding himself for being too fanciful.

In his room, Childermass brought a hand to the back of his head and pressed a steady kiss to the corner of his eye. They lingered there for a moment before Childermass released him, shrugging on his shadows and slipping out of the house as quietly as he had entered the night before, despite Segundus’ offer of breakfast.

Work was interminable, to the extent that Segundus started to wonder if the clock that usually cheerfully tapped out the seconds beside the children’s section had run out of battery, or if he had been placed under some kind of enchantment. When the end of the day finally arrived, Childermass was waiting for him in the snicket, shoulder against the wall and Brewer parked at the end of the road. Segundus climbed onto the bike behind him, holding on tight, and watched as the city blurred into the wildness of the moors around him.

The engine of the bike roaring around him, at once loud and muffled by the helmet, drowned out some of the smaller questions that had been needling him all day. He went over the letter again and again in his mind, replayed the conversation with Hickman, teased individual possibilities out from the tangle and turned them over with the comforting thrum of the engine in his ears and the solid shape of Childermass in his arms. The silence when Childermass stopped the bike in the village felt like something larger, and the familiarity of the garden seemed to go both ways. The apple tree shivered in something other than the light evening breeze, the leaves reaching out to them as they passed.

This time they were received at the front door, a far more comfortable experience for Segundus than breaking and entering had been. They were ushered through to the sitting room of Hickman’s personal apartment and given some tea.

While they drank, Hickman talked. She told them the history of the letters, how they had been written and kept by the Chancellors from Segundus to Levy to Twyman and so on until her, each sworn to secrecy, each remaining a Trustee of the Book until their death.

“You mentioned a spell,” Childermass said, once the conversation had moved from Hickman’s living room to her office. “Have you seen it?”

“It was kept with the letters, no one has seen it since John Segundus.”

Hearing his name said in this fashion – impersonal, not implying _him_ at all – had an odd effect on Segundus. He had heard it said this way many times, of course – he had been a student of magical history, so had heard it said in lectures (usually accompanied by a snigger and an elbow in his side), had seen it written alongside words and deeds he himself had certainly not accomplished. Hearing it from Hickman in that moment, though, made his shoulders tense and his chest tighten, took him back somehow to primary school when the other children would ignore him and talk about him as if he wasn’t there. He nearly opened his mouth to say something, to remind her that he was, in fact, sitting opposite her, but caught himself just in time.

“Can we see it?” He asked instead, folding his hands on his lap to hide how they shook and looking straight ahead at her, not turning to look at Childermass. He could see him from the corner of his eye, could feel the frown directed at him, and ignored it.

“Yes, of course.” Hickman stood, thankfully not noticing the tremor in his voice, and opened an ancient, heavy safe in the corner. The paper she brought with her when she returned was folded, but would be large when opened. Hickman beckoned them over to the round meeting table by the window and laid it out. The yellowish paper was foxed, the ink on it a little faded.

Three heads bent over the spell. Childermass’ eyes narrowed in concentration as they swept over the page; Hickman’s were wide, a hand pressed to her chest as a smile crept over her face; Segundus looked at the writing and felt his vision swimming.

Several hands had worked on it, Segundus could see before he even started reading. There were two hands on it most prominently – the same hands that had penned the letters they had been given yesterday – but there were extra notes scribbled in the margins in different writings, in different inks, some pencil marks. The parchment was two feet wide, so had room for all the annotations and marginalia around the spell written neatly on the right hand side of the sheet, headed in a precise curling script, _A Spell to Replace the Memory_. The left side held a series of symbols: horned circles, something that looked a little like a tree or blades of grass, a circle of interconnecting triangles – the section of the Book that had been translated. This was not headed, but did have a sketched diagram of Vinculus’ body, pointing out where it had been found on his thigh. It was clear that many people _had_ seen it since John Segundus, and the press of Hickman’s lips indicated that this was less than she had expected from the Trustees of the Book.

For a moment, Segundus felt outside himself looking at them. He was certain he could reach out and touch himself on the shoulder. Everything was strange, but the evening light slanting in through the window was hitting the panelling on the walls in a way that made his heart ache in a way it hadn’t since he had left home so long ago.

He read through the spell once, twice, kept going until he felt he could recite it unseen. Then he read the notes surrounding it, recognised a third hand but could come up with no name, only friendly dark eyes and a youthful laugh.

Childermass pointed to the section of the spell describing the use of rosemary, which had at some point been scored through with a pencil, an explanation for this written beside it in warm brown ink.

“You’re not the first to see it.” The voice made Segundus jump, and he turned to see Vinculus propped up against the doorframe, watching them with careful eyes. He wondered how long he had been there, but was glad that his presence explained his curious dizziness.

“What?” Hickman asked, turning to him.

“You lot can never leave well enough alone.” Vinculus pushed himself off the wall and sauntered over to them. He perched on the edge of the table, forcing Hickman to whisk the spell away to save it from being sat on. “Shaftoe liked a look at my thigh.” He gave a salacious wink and slapped the body part in question. “Wanted to make sure you’d got it right, see?” He pointed to a paragraph of particularly jagged writing, one that grouped more around the transcription than the translation. “And Turnbull!” He laughed, high and thin, and Segundus felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. “He had some particular thoughts.” He tapped on the pencil mark scored through the rosemary. “But, his opinions were a bit variable. He’s the one,” he turned to Hickman to say, “who knocked the hole in the kitchen wall. Changed his mind straight after,” he explained to Segundus and Childermass, “but left it there in case he changed it back.”

“I suppose I had better contact the Trustees,” Hickman said, prompting a long, weary sigh from Vinculus.

“I’d rather study this more,” Childermass said, eyes still on the paper. Segundus looked at it too, the many and varied notes from the many and varied pens, and knew what he meant.

“The outcome does seem uncertain,” he agreed, frowning a little at Vinculus’ snort. “If we are to perform this spell, I would like…” he trailed off, the rest of the sentence feeling foolish. “I know it will be very important, but…”

“We’ve both lived these lives until now,” Childermass picked up, his voice stronger than Segundus’ had been, always so much more sure of himself. “I don’t think either of us want to lose that.”

“There’s a lot to be said for forgetting,” Vinculus said, in a voice so different from what they had heard previously that all three of them turned to look at him. He looked old in that moment, and like someone who would very much like to forget. The net of magic around him seemed to sag ever so slightly, and Segundus thought he could see what Childermass did – an ancient soul warring with a body outside of time.

“Give me a few minutes,” Hickman said, coughing a little and drawing their attention from Vinculus. “I’ll type up a copy you can take away.”

“Follow me, gents,” Vinculus said, voice sharp again. “We’ll give the lady some privacy.”

He strode out of the room, and after Hickman gave them a distracted wave and a roll of her eyes, they followed.

The corridors of Starecross made little sense – crossing each other at odd angles, trailing off to end in steps leading up straight into a wall – but Vinculus marched ahead of them confidently, a swagger about his shoulders, a patchy tune whistling between his teeth. Living somewhere for a hundred years would, Segundus thought, give one a certain familiarity with the layout.

They ended in a room that made Segundus sway on his feet, the floor was at such odd angles to the walls. It was laid out as a small lecture theatre, rows of uncomfortable seats facing a small stage (only raised four inches from the floor). There was a chalkboard along one wall, and a rolling screen pulled down opposite the overhead projector, but the rest of the room was covered in dark wood panelling and around a dozen paintings.

They were portraits, Segundus realised as Vinculus marched up onto the stage. Segundus was standing next to one of a ruddy-faced middle-aged man with impressive mutton chops, and beside that was a stern looking lady with a high lace collar and a large but sombre hat. He gazed around the room, watching the fashions in the portraits change little by little, his eyes catching on the second picture. The eyes were familiar, dark and young and laughing even though the face was older than he felt it should be, and he knew they matched the writing he had recognised on the spell. The plaque beneath it read _Thomas Levy, 1849 – 1870_.

The first portrait – the one just beside the door – was blocked from his view by Childermass, who stood so close to it his nose almost touched the surface. Segundus walked over to him, knowing what the portrait would be and frightened, almost, to see it. He touched Childermass on the back, just his fingers resting gently against his spine. Childermass turned to look at him with heavy eyes and stepped back to bring the portrait into view.

Segundus stared.

Sitting in a high-backed armchair, not quite looking at the viewer, was his father.

No, not his father, the mouth was not cruel enough for that, the eyes too large and too soft, and his father was not yet so grey. The plaque beneath the painting read _John Segundus, 1818-1849_ , as he knew it would. He raised a hand to touch the soft green fabric of the waistcoat, but stopped just short.

“Told you you was greyer,” Vinculus said, still standing on the stage, but busy now with drawing obscene cartoons on the chalkboard. One seemed to be a particularly unflattering caricature of Childermass in a rather large hat.

“If this is all true,” Segundus said to Childermass, wondering that if he could pretend to himself then there was some chance it might not be true, “I am not this man. Whoever he was, he is not me. I don’t- I don’t want-” The words were choked by the large jagged lump that had formed in his throat, and he couldn’t force them past.

“It won’t come to that,” Childermass said, his hands coming to rest heavy on his shoulders.

“But surely we owe it?” Segundus said, blinking against ache behind his eyes. “The Trustees have been waiting-”

“ _I’ve_ been waiting!” Vinculus called.

“- for so long. How can we let them down?”

“They can’t force us,” Childermass said. “I’m as curious as everyone else to find out what happens, but I’ve worked to become who I am and I’m not letting anyone take that from me, not even John Uskglass, King or no.”

Segundus smiled a little at that, at the tug at the edge of Childermass’ mouth and the fire in his eyes. Vinculus called from behind them, “Blasphemy!”, and continued on with his work.

“We’ll get the spell from Hickman and look it over till we’re sick to death of it, we’ll see if we can figure out how it works, and if we’re not satisfied we won’t do it.”

Segundus wanted to object, that surely they were destined to do this so what they decided wouldn’t matter, that this was so expected of them he didn’t know if he could refuse, but Childermass looked so sure of himself that he swallowed the words along with the lump in his throat and nodded. Childermass glanced over his shoulder quickly at Vinculus before looking intently back at Segundus as he wiped the tears from his cheeks. Segundus hadn’t felt them fall, and his cheeks burned with the shame of it, but Childermass just kissed him quickly and firmly on the forehead, this thumbs on his cheekbones.

“Right,” Segundus said, and shook himself. He attempted a smile, and knew it was as weak as it felt by the look on Childermass’ face.

He stepped away and walked around the room, looking at each of the ten portraits in turn. He recognised the names, of course, but hadn’t seen most of the faces before. Shaftoe was the shortest serving, lasting only from 1897 until 1903, and was the ruddy-faced man with the mutton chops Segundus had seen as they came in. The last in the line-up was Frederick Townsend (1972 – 1988, the plaque informed him), a jolly-looking man in a neat grey suit and bright red tie.

“Oh, will you stop that?” Hickman’s voice brought him out of his contemplation with a start, but when he turned on his heel to apologise for whatever it was he was doing, he realised that she was speaking to Vinculus. “The cleaners have complained seven times this year!”

“If a man has to live forever,” Vinculus mumbled, taking the yellow cloth she thrust towards him, “you’d think he’d be able to do a bit of _living_.” He grudgingly rubbed the most offensive part of his mural out, but left the rest as it was. “And here I thought he was the worst,” he added, pointing to Childermass as he left the room.

*

They left Starecross with copies of the spell, neatly printed on crisp A4 paper, tucked securely in Segundus’ bag. The sun was sliding towards the horizon as Segundus pulled his helmet on and swung onto Brewer behind Childermass, arms fixed tightly around his waist, and was set by the time they arrived back at Childermass’ flat.

Inside, Childermass closed the curtains and covered all the mirrors, and they bent their heads together over the spell.

It was different from doing the magic in Mrs Howarth’s garden, from talking about boundary spells and racehorses. It felt heavy and important, but the spark of it was even brighter. Segundus felt the dust and the history on it, even as it seemed familiar.

 _We’ve done this before_ , he wanted to say, which was ridiculous, because that was exactly why they were looking at it. Having the typed up copy of the spell helped: the impersonality of it kept the edges of him clearer than the handwritten one Hickman had shown them. He had felt himself slipping a little as they had looked over it, worried that if he touched the parchment he and not the spell would crumble.

There was something comfortable, though, about looking at it and talking it through with Childermass. The copy Hickman had given them had two pages, one with the original translation of the spell, the other detailing the Trustees’ notes and addendums. Segundus found himself frowning at these changes, scoring them out, laughing in agreement as Childermass muttered, “Why did they think they should take out the damn rosemary?”

By two o’clock, Segundus’ brain was overcrowded with ideas, his eyes gritty with sleep, and Childermass sighed that they had done as much work on the spell as they could so tugged him by the arm through to the bedroom.

“I still can’t quite believe this is real.” Segundus turned the main light off and slipped into bed beside Childermass. “It all seems so unlikely.” He sighed and turned to face Childermass, to look at his dark eyes, soft in the yellow light of the bedside lamp.

“It has felt right, hasn’t it?” Childermass asked after a moment, bringing his hand to Segundus’ face, stroking his thumb over his cheekbone. “I met you, and I thought _Oh_ , _there he is_.”

“Is that why you were such an arse, Heathcliff? Harassing innocent men out on the moors?” Something in Segundus relaxed as Childermass smiled at that. It was small, and came on slowly, but it was a smile.

“Sometimes,” he said, and his face fell into a distracted frown. “I’ve had the feeling that I’m somewhere else, or seeing something else. Never for long, but I wonder…”

“I had a dream,” Segundus said, when Childermass didn’t say anything more, “after we… the first night I stayed here.” He stuttered, felt the heat rise to his cheeks as Childermass raised an eyebrow.

“Aye?” Childermass smirked, and Segundus shoved his chest but couldn’t help smiling.

“ _Aye_ ,” he teased, and Childermass pressed a kiss to his temple, clumsy with stifled laughter. “It was us. You were old.” He ran his fingers through the dark hair at Childermass’ temples, solemn now at the memory of it – hazy, but clearing. “Your hair was grey, and you had a scar here.” He traced his finger over Childermass’ cheek, heard the scratch of his stubble. “We were talking about the prophecy, I think, but I’m not sure.” He tried to see that old Childermass in the face in front of him.

“I once dreamt about you scowling at me,” Childermass said, a smile tugging once more at his mouth. “I’d upset you somehow.” He laughed a little, a puff of air, and shook his head. “I knew I’d had to do whatever it was, but…”

“Do you think they are memories?” Segundus asked, rolling onto his back to frown up at the ceiling.

“Maybe.” Childermass was silent for a long while, and when Segundus turned to look at him his face was drawn into a pensive frown, his eyes following an idea Segundus couldn’t see. “If they are,” he said at length, looking back to Segundus, “then maybe everyone’s been looking at the spell the wrong way.”

“If they are,” Segundus said, catching onto Childermass’ train of thought, eyes widening with it. “Then it’s never been a matter of bringing memories _back_ from somewhere else.”

“No,” Childermass said, sitting up and climbing out of bed, putting on the lights as he went through to the living room and their notes. Segundus followed. “If they’ve always been there, but latent, it’s a case of dredging them up. They can’t have known how it would have worked, there are allowances built into it-”

“Yes,” Segundus said, his heart racing as he pulled the spell towards him. “See here, this skimmer that’s been added – it’s for substitution, but do you think it could be changed to one of restoration?”

“I don’t doubt,” Childermass leaned in beside him to look. “Or perhaps revelation, it can’t be-”

“If it’s a case of _supplementing_ our memories rather than _replacing_ them…”

“Then the tokens only act as a symbol, a beacon for the memories, not a vessel for them-”

“If we have tokens for _our_ lives, we could keep the balance, therefore keep hold of ourselves-”

“I can’t believe those idiots took out the rosemary.”

Segundus laughed then, nerves and joy and hope all crowding together in his chest as they scribbled over the paper.

“I want to do it.” Segundus surprised himself with the force of his statement. Up until now it had seemed like an impossible choice – helping magic or keeping himself. He knew his life hadn’t been much, not until now, but it was _his_. If he could keep himself, that made the decision so much easier, made it no choice at all.

“John,” Childermass said, his voice low and brows drawn together, although his eyes were burning. “It’ll change everything.” And even those words made something inside him light up briefly, started some part of himself he had forgotten smouldering.

“Everything’s already changed,” Segundus said, and smiled. “What kind of magician would I be if I passed over this opportunity?”

Childermass laughed at that, a deep bark, and pulled Segundus into his arms. They laughed together, and Segundus wondered if it was the thought of the magic or lack of sleep that was making him so delirious, his face buried in Childermass’ neck.

*

He hadn’t been aware of falling asleep, but the light had started shining through the window so suddenly that there wasn’t any other explanation for it. Slowly, it dawned on him that it was his day off.

He had woken before Childermass, and took full advantage of his leisure to kiss him awake from shoulder to neck and laughed as he was rolled over and pinned to the mattress. He was buoyant, anticipation and delight swelling in his chest until he felt that his ribs might crack from it, only growing as Childermass kissed a scorching trail down his chest. He laughed at the tickle of beard at his thigh, gasped and scrabbled at the sheets as the wet heat of Childermass’ mouth closed around him.

The morning was a white haze around him, light and blurred at the edges, only Childermass and his slick, clever fingers in focus. The push of Childermass’ hips forced the breath from him until he could only press his mouth to Childermass’ neck, his shoulder, his mouth, open and gasping. His fingers pressed into the hot skin of Childermass’ shoulders, his back, his ribs. He dug his nails into the flesh of Childermass’ backside, drawing a groan from him that Segundus felt in his core, drawing him closer until Segundus was as light and blurred as the morning, saying his name over and over until his breath stopped in his lungs, his body coiled tight until that breath and the tension left him in a rush, left him clutching at Childermass and urging him on.

While Segundus lay waiting to remember how to move his limbs, Childermass pressed hot open-mouthed kisses to his neck and chest from where he was half-collapsed over him. With a great deal of effort, he managed to raise his hand enough to direct Childermass’ attentions to his lips, and kissed him with feeling, if not with grace. It was strange to think that this was the first time they had had the leisure to lie like this, slow and easy, neither of them having to run off for work of whatever kind. Segundus revelled in the unhurried drag of Childermass’ lips over his, the deliberate flick and dive of his tongue. They had a whole day of this, perhaps the last they might have if their work on the spell was to be carried through. The thought of it made his chest ache.

“I have some business in Scarborough today,” Childermass said eventually, as his fingers played over Segundus’ chest, his hair wild where it caught in the morning light. “Would you like to come?”

“What kind of business?” Segundus asked, unable to keep the dozy smile from his face as he ran his fingers through Childermass’ hair, as Childermass pressed his cheek to his palm.

“Nothing of much interest, I’m afraid.” Childermass sighed and raised himself up on his elbows, tilting his head as he looked down at Segundus. “Just reinforcing an old spell, but I thought you might like to get out of the city for a bit. See some more of the North.”

“I would like that very much,” Segundus said, and kissed him.


	16. Chapter 16

There was, it turned out, a man who lived rather near a Fairy Road on the outskirts of Scarborough who needed wards set around his home every few months or so and who had hired Childermass to take care of this many years ago. As Childermass wandered around the perimeter checking on the soundness of the wards, Segundus followed, trying to listen at once to Childermass’ description of the magic and to the old man’s stories of the peculiar folks who had come calling over the years. A robin still visited his garden every Candlemas, the man told Segundus, to admonish him for not saving the crumbs from his daughter’s christening cake, even though the daughter in question was now thirty-seven. It was a quick and simple job, and the old man shook Childermass’ hand vigorously while he slipped him a few fivers in a method Segundus guessed was supposed to be surreptitious but was made so more by Childermass' acceptance of them than the old man's giving of them.

Once the job was done, Childermass drove them into the centre of town to walk along the front and up the hill to look around the ruins of the castle.

There was magic about the place, old and forgotten but the remnants lingering nevertheless. It prickled at the insides of Segundus’ elbows, making him scratch a little through the worn wool of his jumper. The walls of the castle – carefully controlled in their collapse – held nothing like the power embedded in the masonry of Starecross, but still they called to him, the lichen sprawling across their surface spelling out a welcome.

“I wonder what the Raven King thinks of this,” Segundus wondered aloud as he pressed his palm against a half-crumbled wall propped up by an iron support. “If ruined buildings belong to him, how do these carefully maintained ruins factor into such a contract?”

He had visited the Shadow House once as a boy, a birthday wish that his parents had been bemused by but had indulged anyway. He had asked to visit for months leading up to his eleventh birthday, and had almost been bowled over by the reality of it. However much he had read about it, however many pictures he had seen, they were as nothing compared to the reality of the place. More than once he had found himself about to address what he was sure was a tall man with curly hair, but when he looked around it had turned out only to be a rosebush or the hanging bough of a yew; more than once he had heard a woman laughing, lovelier than any song. The visit hadn’t lasted long – he had been much more sensitive to magic back then, and he had become pale and dizzy, and his brother had started to complain of boredom and kick the foundations, but it had cemented his love of magic.

The castle did not have so explicitly magical a history (although there were records of the Raven King staying there on a few occasions in the 12th and 13th centuries, never for longer than a night or two), but still there was an atmosphere around the ruins despite the rather dry English Heritage information signs placed every twenty yards or so. It was a dry kind of magic, accumulated like sand blown into a corner, trodden into the cracks between floorboards. The magic of the Shadow House had been grown, cultivated, had pushed its roots into the foundations and thrived there to tempt visitors with its fruit.

“I’ll make sure to ask next I see him,” Childermass replied, his sideways smile curling up his cheek, and nudged him onwards with his shoulder. Segundus hid his smile in his collar and followed.

They got fish and chips to eat as they walked around the castle cliffs to the north bay. It was a warm day, though the breeze off the North Sea was sharp and salty, and Segundus felt his spirit lift with it all: the sun on his face and the vinegar stinging his lips and Childermass’ shoulder hitting casually but deliberately against his as they walked along the front.

Childermass stood close (not too close, not out here in front of the tourists and the fishermen and the grandparents), pointed out to the flat, grey horizon and told Segundus about the time he had gone to Norway with a crew of fishermen on a boat carrying more than nets, that had come back lighter than it had gone out. He licked the grease and the salt from his fingers as he led Segundus back into the town, down onto the soft yellow sand of the beach. They fought off the seagulls and found a bin for their rubbish, then made their way back to Brewer.

It was, Segundus felt, strange for him to be so calm when they were on the brink of such a change. Part of him thought they should be spending every spare moment poring over the spell, but it was – for perhaps the first time – a very small part. The larger part realised that they had, so far, done what they could, and was keen to take what he could from his time as himself, unchanged. There was no way to tell how much the spell would alter of them and he wanted to learn as much as he could about this Childermass: the one with the small, tidy flat and the large, ugly bike.

“Why,” Segundus finally found the will to ask as Childermass passed him his helmet, “have you named your motorbike?”

Childermass stopped in the process of putting on his own helmet to fix him with an amused look, something a little like fondness creeping in at the corners. “What’s brought that question to mind?”

“You’ve just never quite seemed the type to name an inanimate object, that’s all.” He perched himself on the seat of the motorbike. He found he was getting used to the balance of it, was finding the experience slightly less terrifying every time. “I was curious.”

“Aren’t you always?” Childermass huffed out a breath of a laugh and patted the fuel tank of the bike affectionately. “It was my nephew, really. He was three, maybe four, and very excited that the bike went _‘brew brew’_. So: Brewer.” He looked back at Segundus, his eyes twinkling. “Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“I didn’t know you had a nephew.” Segundus pulled the passenger helmet on, and remembered the picture of the small boy, grinning gap-toothed at the camera, on the shelf in Childermass’ flat.

“Aye, Eddie.” Childermass pulled his own helmet on, then his gloves. “My sister’s boy, he’s seven now. They moved to Luton a year back.”

With that, he settled himself on the bike and gestured to Segundus to climb on behind as he started the engine. He revved a few times, letting Segundus hear the _brew brew_ from which the machine had got its name, and pulled onto the road as Segundus held tight to his waist and laughed.

Segundus was a little surprised when, instead of heading back to York, Childermass continued north along the coast road. The landscape passed by in a blur of hills, golden fields, and small cottage-lined villages, the sea occasionally coming into view. In one of these villages, Childermass pulled off into a narrow lane to the right. Segundus held on more tightly to Childermass as a wall rose on one side of them, a high hedge on the other, crowding around them on a road barely wide enough for a single car. They followed this road for long enough that Segundus wondered if it would ever stop, if they had trespassed by accident into Faerie, but they eventually reached the abrupt end of it: a slight widening in the road just broad enough for a car to turn around in, a bench, and a vertiginous cliff down to the sea.

Childermass stopped the bike and Segundus climbed off, removing his helmet to look around him. Fields followed the slow rise and fall of the land, almost to the edge of the cliff, bordered by ragged gorse and hawthorn trees bent and stunted by wind and salt.

A footpath led from the end of the road to the edge of the cliff, branching off to the north and south. Childermass ignored these options, however, and continued straight to the edge of the cliff, following a third, barely visible path. Segundus followed, and a short, undignified scramble later they were standing on a beach.

It was as far from the domesticated, promenade-lined sands of Scarborough as he could imagine. This beach was small and rocky, empty of life other than the two of them and some sea birds floating a little way off. It was rugged, rough; the cliffs towered over them, and Segundus felt as though the arms of the bay were embracing them, holding them close and safe. There were none of the warring sounds and smells of Scarborough here – no scent of candy floss or chips or exhaust fumes to overpower the pure, complex smell of the sea. He closed his eyes and inhaled the ozone tang of it, heard the screech of the cliff birds wheeling overhead.

The breath vanished from his lungs as he stumbled a little over the uneven rocks down to the shore, watched the waves froth as they tumbled over and over one another, advancing and retreating again and again. The shape of it, Segundus thought, almost looked like writing: white froth on dark stone full of fissures and cracks, the call of the birds and the shape of them in the sky a different paragraph in the same book.

He looked out at it, breathless and astounded.

Childermass’ arms slipped around him, his chest pressing against his back and warm against the chill of the North Sea wind. Segundus laughed, felt the splash of the sea on his skin, and turned to face him.

The words he had been holding back burst from him, three syllables that left him beaming and breathless and no longer concerned that it was too soon or too much. His worries had been borne away by the wind and washed away by the brackish water at their feet. He had never felt so full, so close to bursting.

When Childermass kissed him, he tasted the salt on his lips. It made his mouth water, made him open up to the taste of it, to the velvet softness of Childermass’ tongue and the sharp scrape of his teeth. He wound his arms around his neck, tangled his fingers in the wind-blown mess of his hair, and let himself fall into this man, this magician, without fear.

He remembered his first walk on the moors, remembered that strange, wild joy that had taken hold of him as the wind nipped at his cheeks and played with his hair. He wanted to shout now, so he did. He stepped back from Childermass, grinning all the while, ran until his shoes were soaked in the cold of the surf, opened his arms to the sea and let it out. The shout carried and bounced, echoed back to him by the cliffs and the birds, and followed by Childermass’ low laugh. Water splashed behind him, and he was bundled roughly up in warm arms, his face scratched by Childermass’ rough cheeks until he was laughing, too, and they stumbled back onto the dry rocks, up to the cliff face which smelt of earth and stone and salt when his back was pressed against it and his lips were kissed raw.

The sun was slipping behind the houses when they got back to York, the sky still luminous against the buildings. Childermass stopped the bike on Pavement, followed Segundus down the Yard and kissed him thoroughly beside the door, until Segundus had to push him away, laughing, to say goodnight. It was, he realised as his pulse thrilled through him, a small revelation to be able to spend time with Childermass outside stolen moments in the shop or in the cramped darkness of his flat, unrushed by the rest of the world.

*

“Have you noticed this?” Childermass asked the next day, tapping at a section of the spell where it was spread out on the bench between them.

Childermass had come to the shop at lunchtime and encouraged him to take advantage of the rare sunshine and bring his sandwich along to Dean’s Park, and they were now sitting on an octangular stone bench, as golden and carved as the Minster itself, which ran around the base of a slim tree. Childermass, sitting with his legs either side of the bench, turned the paper around so it was facing Segundus. He tapped the passage again, and Segundus laid the rest of his sandwich down to pick the spell up.

“Which part? Oh, the timing?”

“Yes.” Childermass’ brows drew together, although his eyes had become bright. “The term they’ve used there – _new_ – I found a transcription of the Book and looked at the symbols more closely. The symbol seems to be this-” he drew two interlocking circles on the paper beside the section in question “-which was originally translated as _ùr_ , the Sidhe word for _new_.”

“You think the translation is wrong?”

“I do.” He scratched at his rough cheek with his thumb, scowling at the paper in Segundus’ hands. “Looking at the transcription, and flicking through Ormskirk, it occurred to me that it might stand for _urrad_ , which seems to mean _many_ in some Sidhe dialects. It fits more closely to the symbol, to my mind anyway.”

“So you’re saying…” Segundus looked at the page for a moment, let his mind catch up with Childermass’ words. “That we don’t need a new moon for the spell, but a _blue_ moon?”

The smile that crept across Childermass’ face then told Segundus that he had come to the right conclusion, and that Childermass was pleased about it. It also implied that Childermass thought it unlikely that anyone else but the two of them could have come to the same conclusion, although Segundus was unsure how he could fit all of that into one smirk.

“It makes sense,” Segundus continued, emboldened by that smile. “Lancaster and Ormskirk wrote about the power of reflection in a blue moon, and if we will indeed be restoring rather than replacing the memories, then reflection will be an important part of that.” He clapped his hands together in delight. “And it gives us more time! The new moon is in a week, correct?” Childermass nodded, watching Segundus as his smirk turned a little more amused. “But there’s a blue moon at the end of next month! I’ve been keeping an eye on the lunar cycles, you see, as I read about Bawlby’s theory on their impact on the veil between worlds, and thought it might have some useful application in the placing of wards and gates across Fairy roads. I had thought the blue moon might have been an excellent time to put up wards, as the power of it might reflect the spell and thus increase the strength of it, but-” he realised he was babbling and quickly shut himself up, feeling his face heat as he took another bite of his sandwich.

“Exactly,” Childermass said, taking a sip from his cardboard cup of coffee. “And that's an interesting line of enquiry. Do you think it would work with other boundary spells, say, Middlewick?”

Segundus laughed a little, because it hadn’t occurred to him, and he remembered that Childermass had not properly told him about his experience with the race horse breeder, so he listened as Childermass explained the intricacies of the boundary spells he had performed, describing the reactions of the horses and the stable owners with such dry humour that Segundus more than once choked on his lunch.

Childermass picked him up after work and took him to Starecross, where they discussed the spell and Childermass’ translation with Hickman and, in a manner of speaking, with Vinculus.

It became a new routine, something so outside of the banality of Segundus’ life in London that he was almost giddy with it. This was what he had come here for: this pulse of excitement and discovery and _meaning_ , and as their notes surrounded the printed spell and overflowed onto other sheets, Segundus remembered that morning at the top of the Minster, saw that blackbird carrying off the weight that had been bogging him down for years, and felt it lift from him once more.

During lunch breaks in Dean’s Park or the Museum Gardens when it was dry, or in the small staffroom upstairs in the shop if it was not, he and Childermass talked about what they hadn’t before, all that had seemed irrelevant to their current lives and magic: Segundus told Childermass about when, during the Christmas holidays of his first year at university, he had foolishly used a photograph taken at a party as a bookmark. It had dropped out of the book as he read and landed at his father’s feet. The picture, Segundus explained, his heart aching in his chest (less painfully than it once had, but aching nonetheless), had been of him kissing his first real boyfriend ( _William_ , he thought but didn’t say), careless and joyful, the smile just visible on his own face. He described to Childermass the cold rage that had descended over his father’s face, taking his colour with it and leaving only a white mask. The picture had been thrown into the fire, and he had never seen his father since.

In turn, Childermass told him about his sister, the trouble they used to get up to in the backstreets, the close scrapes they’d had with the police growing up. He told him about her husband, and exactly what he thought of him (which wasn’t much), and how strange it felt to have her taken so far away. He supposed, he said with a sigh, that she must have felt similar when he had worked on the boats, had travelled to Norway and Denmark, and that sometimes leaving was the only way to love somewhere.

Segundus spoke of his mother, of how he felt her death had neatly snipped out part of him, how he had never quite been able to figure out which part. He told, voice wavering but not breaking, how she had always told him he was an old soul, laughing while she did, but not cruelly like his father, not sneeringly like his brother, but warmly, as if it made him special and something to be treasured. He explained how his heart still ached when he thought how her soul had not reached nearly the age it should have.

Childermass did not speak of his mother, and Segundus did not ask him to. Instead, he talked about his nephew: the rides they had taken on Brewer and the magic he had taught him (he was a quick learner), how he hoped that he wouldn’t become too much like his father now they were so far away.

They spent the evenings in Childermass’ flat, looking over the spell and altering what they felt needed altered, stripping out useless florilegia and adding in skimmers and rosemary. As Segundus lay in Childermass’ arms waiting for sleep to take him, he thought about his token, about how to wrap up an entire life in one item. He thought about the watch on the bedside table, ticking faintly, how his father had presented it to him on his eighteenth birthday and how it was the most expensive thing he owned, but then he thought about what had happened later that year, and how his father had not given him anything for his twenty-first. He dismissed that thought from his head and pressed his face against Childermass’ shoulder.

He wanted to ask Childermass what he was planning to use as a token, but it felt like such a personal question that he balked from it whenever he was on the edge of asking, even with Childermass’ breath warm and steady against his neck, his arm heavy over his middle.

*

One night towards the end of June, he returned to Lady Peckett’s Yard to change his clothes and put on a washing. He hadn’t realised how little time he had spent there in the last few weeks until Mrs Pleasance came into the kitchen and said, warmly, “Oh, there you are John, I thought I was seeing a ghost!” She winked at him and started to unload the dishwasher.

“I’m sorry, Mrs Pleasance-” she tutted as she did every time he didn’t call her _Hettie_ , “- I’ve been rather busy, I didn’t meant to leave you quite so-”

“Oh, don’t be silly, lamb,” she said, patting him firmly on the cheek before turning to put the kettle on to boil. “I’m not your mother, it’s none of my business what you get up to in your own time.”

“There is something I ought to tell you, actually,” he said, stopping her as she went back through to the living room. He sat at the table with the cup of tea she handed to him, and she sat opposite him. “About why I haven’t been around much.”

“Oh, you don’t need to do that, love, I know.” She covered his hand on the table with her own and squeezed.

“You… I’m sorry, what?” He blinked at her, astounded. She had very little knowledge of magic – had admitted it to him jovially but not apologetically many times when he had started talking of it and veered off at odd tangents – so how could she possibly know?

“I’ve seen you, silly!” She laughed a little and sat back in her chair. “In the afternoons. There was one afternoon – you must have been on your lunch break – I saw you sitting with him in Dean’s Park and oh, John, it was clear on your face!” She sighed a little and smiled at him. “I did wave, but you didn’t see me.”

“I’m afraid I still don’t understand, I-”

“Now don’t you worry, love, I’ve no problem with it. My nephew Richard – you remember Jean? Her boy – he’s the same way, you know. He moved out to Manchester, and he’s met a lovely fella – what’s his name, now? They both came round at Christmas last year, gave me a card so I should remember…”

Segundus felt his face start to heat as he realised what she meant. He had thought they had been surreptitious enough, but if Mrs Pleasance had noticed, then…

“I, erm, thank you, Mrs Pleasance-” _tut_ “- but that’s not what I was going to say.”

“Oh, so you’re not-”

“Oh no, I am… he is… I hadn’t thought it was so…” His face was aflame, he thought, as he struggled to remember where he had started with this. “But I was going to tell you something… something unrelated, that might affect me staying here.”

“Oh, I see. Well, go ahead, lamb.”

He tried, as best he could through his burning face, to explain the prophecy to her, the spell and how things might change, how _he_ might change. She listened to him with a serious expression, her hands curled around her mug. He found himself veering off into the area of a magical history lecture at points, but managed to pull himself back as he saw her gaze cloud over.

“You see,” he finished, “it’s hard for us to know exactly what might happen. We think we will keep an awareness of ourselves – we certainly hope we will – but magic can be such an unpredictable thing, we won’t truly know until we try.”

“I can see that,” she said, nodding pensively. “What I think you should do, if you don’t mind me giving advice-”

“Oh, of course not! Please do!”

“Well, I think it might be an idea to write a bit about yourself – a little biography, if you catch me – so you can look back on it as a reminder, after all this business.”

“Oh,” Segundus said, as the idea of deliberately writing about himself had never occurred to him. “That does seem sensible.”

He smiled, filled so suddenly with gratitude for her, not just for this but for all the support she had offered him since he came to York. For the fresh warm bread, the help finding a job, the words of general encouragement and sense over breakfast and Emmerdale. There was one particular morning, he thought, but could not put his finger on – there had been snow, he was sure, but he frowned and shook his a little at that, because he knew it had not snowed since he had come. Instead of dismissing it, though, he tried to chase it. He remembered anticipation tingling in his fingertips – a promise of magic? – and the taste of herring on his tongue, and then the impression was gone.

“Thank you,” he said, and clutched her hand. “I must go and tell John.” He kissed her cheek as he left the room, and just caught her calling after him.

“And you’ll have to bring him for tea!”

*

As Segundus set himself to work writing his condensed autobiography, he found it rather more difficult than he had expected. There were a number of things that made this difficult for him, one of which was his sheer embarrassment at the thought that anyone would ever read it, and how self-centred it must seem. Another was that the further he got along with it, the more he realised how little he had done with his life. He was forced to constantly remind himself that both of these were entirely beside the point and had nothing to do with the exercise.

When he had told Childermass about Mrs Pleasance’s plan, he had been in agreement with it. “Sensible woman, your landlady,” he had said, and Segundus had shut his mouth around the other thing Mrs Pleasance had discussed before he could embarrass them both, although he was beginning to think that Childermass lived in some realm outside embarrassment.

The more the spell was discussed, the more real everything started to seem, and the more Segundus felt he was doing George Honeyfoot a disservice by keeping him in the dark. He said nothing at June’s meeting of the Society – Hickman had forbidden it when he had suggested it to her, saying that they needed to wait until after the meeting with the Trustees of the Book before releasing any information to the general community – but waited until the Sunday after to tell him when they had finished lunch. He had thought about it ( _agonised, rather_ , he felt Childermass would say) and had decided that George did not constitute “the general community”, as he was first of all one man, and second of all the most trustworthy man Segundus felt he had ever met. The longer he held the news back from his friend, the more the guilt wore away at him.

In his office, George sat rapt as Segundus explained it all – the tug on his soul taking him to Starecross, the moment in Mrs Howarth’s garden with Childermass, the moments he had felt adrift from himself, the prophecy, the spell, Vinculus – and was silent for some minutes once he had finished.

“I did always think your name was the most curious coincidence,” George said eventually, and was quiet a few moments longer. “Do you have the spell with you? I would love to see it!”

Segundus did, and took it from his bag to place it on the clearest bit of desk he could find in George’s office. They looked it over together, George exclaiming over the original translation, and more so over the work that Segundus and Childermass had done with it.

Segundus told him about Mrs Pleasance’s suggestion that they write to themselves, and how difficult he was finding it. It was, he found, much easier to speak to George about it than to Childermass, although he was unsure why that was. Perhaps it was the shadowless cheer George managed to imbue things with, or perhaps it was the way he never passed judgement (whereas Segundus had found Childermass capable of passing judgement with the twitch of a single muscle in his brow, as he had seen when Burntwood had been required to fetch Segundus from the staffroom at the end of an inadvertently extended lunch break).

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Segundus said to George, looking at his hands where they were clasped between his knees. “I know I’ve been out of sorts, and I’m sorry if I worried you.”

“Oh, lad, don’t be like that!” George smiled and clapped him on the back. “I’m just glad you’re alright – and think of it! Who would have known there was so much still left to discover? I can’t wait to see how the Society reacts next month!”

And that, Segundus realised, was a terrifying prospect.

 


	17. Chapter 17

The sky was all over grey, yet luminescent, as if the world had been trapped inside a river pearl. The day had been cold and damp even for North Yorkshire, autumn come early to late July. Although it was not raining, the heather on the moor seemed coated in moisture, as if dew still lingered in the early evening. The leaves on the hawthorn trees sagged under the weight of it.

 “Will the cloud matter?” Segundus asked, looking up at the featureless cloud stretched above the moor.

“I doubt it,” Childermass said, voice gruff as he scattered rosemary around the two circles. “If English magic were dependent on a clear sky, we’d never get anything done.”

Segundus could find no argument with this, and turned around to help Hickman bring the last of the things out of the car. They placed candles and mirrors around the edges of the two uneven circles (they had tried their best to keep them perfect, but the rocks and tuffets of the moor worked steadily against this plan and after all, Childermass pointed out, they only had to lie within them), illuminated all the while by the sepia-toned light of the cloud.

Hickman’s sturdy Land Rover was parked at the edge of the road about twenty yards away, where Fenella Stallebrasse and her independent observer sat in two folding chairs, sharing a thermos of tea. Segundus couldn’t help but glance over at them nervously as he and Childermass worked.

 

It had been nerve-wracking, meeting the Lord Chief Justice of the Cinque Dragownes, even more so when she had been together with the other Trustees of the Book. Hickman had spent most of June in a flurry of letters, phone calls, and faxes as she organised the meeting of the Trustees. It was apparently something that didn’t occur very often, as there had been a quiet sort of panic surrounding her in that time as she discovered out of date addresses, and that two of the people she was trying to contact had died long before her time as Chancellor. Another had not been seen since she ventured out onto the King’s Roads in 1973 (all that had been left was a cheerful note to her husband proclaiming that she would be back in time for tea).

Despite these obstacles, the meeting had been arranged for the first Monday in July. Segundus and Childermass had been called to Starecross, and from there into a meeting room just off Hickman’s office. They had spent half an hour waiting outside at the behest of Hickman’s secretary before being ushered into the room, which paused mid-quarrel to regard them intently, Vinculus looking on all the while with a delighted spark in his eye. Stallebrasse in particular had seemed to go through Segundus’ soul with a wire brush. The quarrelling had picked up again almost immediately, the two men either side of Hickman (Segundus had recognised them from their portraits as Townsend and Bowring) leaning across to point accusingly at each other, while Vinculus had rubbed his hands together gleefully. Through this, Stallebrasse had kept her eye on the two young men standing before her, a weight in her gaze.

 

Now, here she was – steel hair and steel spine, dignified even with a tartan rug over her knees and a plastic mug clutched in her hands – watching over them to ensure things were done correctly, that there was nothing to be picked apart or branded a hoax when all had been done.

If, indeed, it worked.

 

The previous night, Childermass had consulted his cards. He had tossed and turned for what seemed like hours, until Segundus had been forced to roll drowsily over to place a hand on his chest and murmur, “John”. This had stilled him, but only for a moment. Before Segundus had known what was happening, Childermass was out of the bed and out of the room. He was back before Segundus – sleep-muddled and restless himself – could blink, sitting cross-legged on the bed and shuffling his cards between his long fingers, eyes intent on the deck.

“What do they say?” Segundus had asked once they had been dealt, sitting up and peering down at the shapes he couldn’t quite make out in the near-darkness, the cards that Childermass seemed to know more by feel than by sight.

Childermass had taken a long time to reply. He sat staring at the cards, thumb pressed to his lips while his forehead wrinkled. He had picked up the cards, shuffled, and laid them out again. A weak light had begun to glow through the curtains – the early summer dawn rendered pale and grey by the unrelenting cloud – and the sparrows in the trees outside had begun their morning chattering before Childermass spoke.

“Uncertainty,” was what he said, seeming uncertain himself. He had looked between all the cards laid out on the bed before them – Segundus had been able to see them a little more clearly by then, could pick out  _La Papesse_ , and one upside down that looked like the Two of Wands. “Not the outcome,” Childermass had explained, touching the edges of his cards at once both reverently and absent-mindedly, “but us.  _We’re_  uncertain.”

Segundus had sighed at that, said “I didn’t need your cards to tell me that,” and pressed his cheek against Childermass’ bare shoulder, had felt the brief reverberation of his laugh.

 

By the time the circles had been laid out in a way that satisfied everyone, the sun was slipping below the horizon with little fanfare. There was no glorious sunset, just a gradual dimming of the light until the headlights on the Land Rover had to be turned on so they could see. Vinculus, perched atop the vehicle’s roof rack on a large cushion, looked out over them,  alternately shouting out areas where the circles needed tidying up and casting ghastly shadows over his face by holding a torch beneath his chin.

Once the circles were completed to the best the geography of the moors would allow, Hickman brought the last two items over to them. These were wrapped in cloth and tied with string, one of them of a much better shape for this treatment than the other and much neater. The other seemed to have odd corners and dips, exaggerated by the stark light cast by the headlights. Segundus frowned at it as Hickman carried them over.

She unwrapped the items and laid them on the folding table they had brought for the purpose. The first, the one which had looked so odd while wrapped, was a strange cross-shaped object which seemed to have been constructed out of a ribbon and some things from a woman’s antique beauty case. The other was an old, dirty, crumbling set of cards, held together with a pale ribbon and willpower. These Childermass reached out for, but stopped just shy of touching.

“These are the tokens?” He asked, his eyes on the cards full of a ferocity and tenderness Segundus had never quite seen, that caught on something deep in his chest.

“They are. The cards were chosen by John Childermass, the Palian cross by John Segundus.”

 _We knew that_ , Segundus almost said, but kept his mouth shut. He had been indecisive until the last, and had brought with him three possible tokens: his long-loved copy of  _A Child’s History of the Raven King_ , his college scarf from his Oxford days, and the small looking-glass he had used the very first time he had managed practical magic at school. Seeing the cross, he decided that the mirror was the one – wondered at how he could possibly have considered anything else. He found he was almost touching the cross, and pulled himself back. This they could not do until the spell was starting.

They ran through the procedure once, then twice, until Hickman was sure they knew what they were doing, and the independent observer – Segundus had never been told his name, had never been introduced – knew what to expect. In the light catching the edge of the figure, Segundus could see both the observer and Stallebrasse taking copious notes.

 

He thought of his own notebook, safe on the back seat of the car where he had left it, and of the letters tucked between the pages. He thought of George’s face when he had revealed the prophecy to him, talked over the spell. He wondered if he would remember his friend at the end of this – hoped that he would. He had explained to the family a little of what was planned and what was likely, and had said his goodbyes – such as he could, given the uncertainty over what might happen – on Sunday during their weekly lunch. He had been enveloped by Margaret’s motherly arms for long minutes, then by Beth and Jane. Sarah had shaken his hand, given him a serious frown, and wished him luck. The thought of losing their warmth – even the memory of it – made him ache, opened up a hollow space inside him. He had written to each of them, detailing his gratitude for his time with them and their friendship, and expressing his regret that things had been changed so irrevocably, but that he hoped they might learn to treat the different John Segundus who may return as a friend.

The letters to his father and brother were more impersonal, but he had felt he ought to write them. Some sun-kissed days from his childhood still remained in his memory, before they had both started to shut down to him – before they had started to realise that he was different from them, quiet and strange and humming with magic, before the incident with the photograph when they had shunned him and been shunned at last – and knew he owed them part of an explanation, at least.

If the spell didn’t work the way they hoped it would – if their modifications didn’t work - Hickman knew where the letters were, and where to send them.

 

He shook himself. They were ready.

He lit a taper from the lighter Hickman held out to them, and in unison he and Childermass walked around the outside of their circles of rosemary, lighting the candles and murmuring the first part of the spell under their breath. During the planning, Segundus had worried about the risk of the candles setting a fire in the heather, but the unrelenting damp of the day put his mind at rest on that count at least, and he found as he travelled around the circle his mind focused more clearly on the magic. It was thick, and he could feel it flowing viscous through the air around them, settling in the middle of the circles.

They returned to the table, and laid the tapers down. Segundus took the cross-like object up in his left hand, and held his mirror in his right. He swallowed around the lump in his throat, tried to push down the panic rising inside him and concentrate on the thick, syrupy feeling of the magic itself. When he did this, he trusted the magic more, trusted himself more.

This was so far from what he had ever imagined for himself, so outside the reach of possibility, that he couldn’t quite believe it was actually happening. He turned to look at Childermass, at the strong shape of his shoulders cast in the light of the Land Rover’s headlights, holding a deck of cards in each hand: the tattered and ancient deck in his left, his own in his right.

“Out on the moors under the blue moon,” Segundus said, trying to smile a little through his nerves. “This isn’t your Mr Norrell’s  _respectable magic_.”

Childermass didn’t reply, but huffed a quiet laugh and looked at him with his dark, dark eyes before Hickman drew their attention once more.

“Lie in the circle. Make sure you’re entirely inside – I don’t know what will happen if part of you is left outside, but I doubt it will be pleasant.”

Segundus stepped into his own circle at Hickman’s instruction, had to almost push through the viscosity of the magic inside, and watched Childermass do the same beside him. He sneezed, the smoke from the burning rosemary tickling his nose. Vinculus snorted atop the car.

It was strange to think that even as they set the spell up, Foxcastle was likely reading through the process, and he wondered what the Society would think to watch this.

 

During the last meeting they had been thrown into disarray. Even as Segundus had arrived, following George up the stairs to the Long Room, he had been aware of the wave of disbelieving gasps and mutterings travelling down the staircase as the news spread. He had not been surprised, therefore, when he had reached the room itself and seen Hickman sitting beside a rather sullen-looking Dr Foxcastle. She had seemed unaware of the stir her presence had caused, and had merely been looking around the room with a casual interest, smiling and nodding to the magicians she knew while ignoring the grumbling going on around her.

“Looks like Grose’ll have to wait till next month to present his paper,” Charlie Redruth had said to Segundus as they sat. A glance had confirmed that the man was sitting with his chin on his fist while glowering unashamedly at Hickman. Segundus had some sympathy – he knew he had been waiting months to present his work. “What do you think this is about?”

Segundus had panicked a little, but caught George’s eye briefly. His friend had thankfully grasped his meaning, so shrugged and said, “Something important, no doubt. I can count on one hand the number of times Starecross have come to speak without invitation,” an answer which had served to both pique and settle Charlie’s curiosity at once.

Hickman’s speech had explained the prophecy, the spell, the secrecy the Trustees of the Book had been held to for generations – keeping the details thankfully obscure. The magicians in the room should have been shouting, rioting, at the news which was not really news, but should have been news almost two hundred years previously. They had been kept in the dark, and Segundus had seen it on the faces around him, at the other tables, but nobody raised their voice to interrupt.

It was only the moment after Hickman’s bottom had hit her seat once more that the air had erupted with arguments and protests, and had not settled down after that. Segundus had never seen such a level of passion from the Society as a whole, and had been glad for Hickman’s discretion and for George’s presence at his side. The chaos had seemed to work as a barrier to the magicians’ thoughts, as none of them had even so much as glanced at Segundus, for which he was incredibly thankful.

Through the uproar, Hickman had managed to explain that she, personally, had not been keeping the secret of the prophecy for a hundred and seventy years, and that the York Society was the first to know due to the deep and treasured links between it and Starecross, and had lastly assured them that the Cinque Dragownes were aware of the events. This had settled things down enough for her to present the Society with copies of the prophecy and the spell, with illustrations of the original script of each, and quietly make her way out of the meeting.

 

“Let us begin.” Hickman spread her arms, and the men started the second half of the spell.

Segundus murmured the words of the spell to himself, heard the quiet sound of Childermass doing the same, felt he was hearing the other man more loudly than he should have over the night-sounds of the moors.

The moon slipped out from behind the clouds, dazzling him for an instant, before it was once more hidden. The cross and the mirror felt heavy and warm in his hands, and his eyes started to feel hot and itchy from the smoke. He closed them, and felt himself enveloped in a clear brightness like amber as the tree-sap magic flowed over him.


	18. Chapter 18

It was a flame flickering to life from nothing in his chest, in his heart, in his head.

He opened his eyes and found himself standing in front of a grand old house. It wasn’t the largest he had ever seen, but was impressive enough, although nothing had been done about the ivy creeping over the side wall, or the broken pane of glass in the upstairs window he knew was cold when the wind blew from the east.

“John!” A voice called, strident and urgent, and he walked towards it. The door swung open in front of him, and he stepped through.

Once inside, he realised that part of the reason the house seemed so large was that he himself seemed rather small, or the doorknobs were at the wrong height.

“John!” Another voice came this time, deeper and laughing. “Come here, you chittiface!”

This second voice made him stop, frozen in place in the middle of the hall. A chorus of sharp, unkind laughter issued from behind the door in a barrage. It was, he knew in an instant, his uncle; he hadn’t thought he would return so soon.

Blood bloomed sharp on his tongue, and he realised he had bitten through his lip. Although he didn’t want to go through the door, he knew it would be worse the longer he left it, but his guts had shrunk inside him, his organs small and dense, the rest of him left hollow. He swallowed his blood and his fear and lifted his hand to the shining brass of the doorknob.

˳

The door seemed to shrink as it swung open, the light in the room at a different angle than it had been in the hall. The air seemed different, staler, and now there was no laughter. Although his stomach still curdled, it was a different kind of fear. The strange sweet smell of a sickroom invaded his nostrils, made his skin feel tacky as if it were he who had been confined to his bed for months.

“John.” The voice that called him now was weak, rasping, and his heart lurched in his chest at the sound of it. He stepped forward, uncertain but longing to see her, terrified of the changes that had undoubtedly ravaged her in the months he had been away at school. “You’re back.”

“Yes, mother, I’m here.” His own voice wavered as he stepped closer to her, and now he could see her in the bed, just a head and some arms above the blankets. Her frame was so small that she barely made a lump in the sheets, and he found it suddenly difficult to believe she had a body at all.

He settled gently on the edge of her bed and took her hand, which was cold and papery and felt as delicate as a bird’s wing. He tried to smile in the face of her watery, over-bright eyes. She would tell him how glad she was that he was able to get away from the house at school, how wonderful it was that he had earned – truly earned – his scholarship, how he was her little scholar.

He couldn’t tell her how miserable he was there, how the other boys chased and teased him, made fun of his bookish ways, his unfashionable, oft-mended clothes. He felt the tears rising hot and bitter in the back of his throat and blinked them away for her sake, talked to her instead of his Latin lessons, of the History Master – who was ancient but kind, and taught Segundus about the magicians of old before supper, away from the jeering of his peers.

As he talked – about John Uskglass, Thomas Godbless, Maria Absalom – her grip on his hand relaxed. He saw her eyes flutter closed, open blearily, close again. He stood, bent to kiss her forehead, and told her to sleep, that he would return when she felt strong enough. He left the room, pausing at the door to look back at her, certain in his very bones that if he left this room now, he would never see her again. He took a deep breath of the sweet, stale air and grasped the doorknob with a conviction he didn’t feel.

˳

He stepped out of darkness into blinding summer light, out of silence into air filled with joyous shouts and laughter. The air was sweet, but with sun-warm flowers – honeysuckle, damask roses – rather than sickness, and Segundus found himself smiling even as he tried to tug his coat sleeves down over his fraying shirt cuffs.

“John, there you are!” The youth who had spoken was honey-blonde and smiling, his hand on Segundus’ arm – warm and firm – ushering him out of the doorway and into the honey-stone quad, where he was nearly mown over by half a dozen young men running past. “We were about to leave without you!”

“I’m sorry, I hadn’t quite realised the time.”

William – he knew him now as William, how could he not have remembered? – laughed in a way that made Segundus’ insides squirm exquisitely and threw an arm around his shoulders.

“Come now, John, we can’t have you shut up with your books on such a glorious day! The river calls, and we must answer!” He slipped his arm through Segundus’ and pulled him through the archway as laughter formed itself in Segundus’ chest, an unfamiliar but welcome shape.

˳

Darkness surrounded him and he stumbled to a stop, bumping against something solid and warm. In the glimmer of candlelight he caught the shine of golden hair, then brown eyes and full lips. Something important had been said, something that was making Segundus’ heart beat wildly in his chest, and now there was a hand on his cheek, lips against his, and so much relief flooding through his veins that he thought he might collapse.

He closed his eyes.

˳

Cold air bit at him through his thin coat, so he pulled it more tightly around himself.

“I have a spell for you, sir, I can tell you that!” He opened his eyes. The man was standing beside his yellow-curtained tent, his eyes blue and piercing and looking unwaveringly at Segundus, despite the London crowds passing between them. “And more besides, I feel.” His mouth stretched into a wide, discoloured grin, and Segundus knew this was not a man to be trusted.

He found himself crossing to the grubby yellow curtains despite himself.

“You are a magician, sir?”

“No, I only offer spells and like the colour yellow.” The man sneered, and ushered Segundus into his booth. Where his sleeve rode up his arm, Segundus caught a glimpse of blue, like the tattoos he had seen on sailors, but far neater. It was only a glimpse, for as soon as the man noticed the exposed area, he tugged his sleeve down once more and cast a suspicious look behind him.

Segundus stepped into the tent.

˳

The door opened, a tall ragged man with a crooked face appearing behind it. This couldn’t be the man he was looking for, surely? He didn’t look like a scholar, not at all like a man who had spent his life collecting books of magic, but something – something deep down in his guts, in his bones, in his soul – gave Segundus the curious feeling that this man knew magic like a raven knew flight.

“Mr Norrell?” He asked, uncertain, and was answered by a shake of the head.

“Come in,” the man said in his low voice, and Segundus stepped over the threshold.

˳

The snow followed him into the cathedral, a gust of wind bustling in behind him as if the snow wished to see the magic as much as he. He turned at the creak of the door, saw Norrell’s man closing the doors behind him.

His heart was in his throat, anticipation and worry warring inside him. How he longed for Norrell to do some magic for them – he had spent his life longing to see magic, but now that the chance was upon him he wished the circumstances were different. He looked to Mr Honeyfoot, saw his eager eyes wandering the early-morning cathedral. The stones were lit only by the barely-risen winter sun and the men’s lanterns.

It was cold, but that was not why Segundus was shivering.

At the first rumble of stone, his eyes flew around, searching for the source. The magicians of the York Society swirled around the cathedral like leaves caught in a whirlwind, and Segundus was no different.

The rock-hewn voices of the statues, their limestone bones grating, the shouts of the magicians all echoed together so that Segundus felt he was in the midst of a storm, his heart racing with the wonder of it.

 Throughout it all there was a shadow that remained still, dark eyes watching the chaos with detachment. Segundus caught those eyes with his own, briefly, before he slipped through the door to the chapter house.

˳

He seemed to pass through a dozen doors, a dozen memories, in moments: here was the Shadow House and the overpowering, dizzying magic of Jonathan Strange, the overpowering charm of the man himself; here was a modest party held by Mr Honeyfoot on the occasion of Miss Honeyfoot’s engagement; here was the bizarre maze of Starecross and Mrs Lennox’s warm concern.

Here was Childermass on the steps, denying him what he had always known to be an impossible dream, and with him the feeling of Segundus’ skin shattering and leaving his nerves open and raw.

Here was Childermass once more, face pale and drawn as he explained the need he had for Segundus, for Starecross, for the sake of the Lady more than for Mr Norrell, and Segundus felt his desire to refuse dwindling the more he heard until he finally ushered Childermass inside.

There were flashes upon flashes of Lady Pole that Segundus could only distinguish as different memories by the changing of the light, the tension in her shoulders, the increasing fugue in his own mind. The corridors were taken over by tendrils of roses in time-lapse, the one over the lady’s mouth constantly in bloom.

There was Stephen Black, staring at him impassively with tired eyes and a rose blooming bright against his dark skin.

˳

He felt the surge of magic returning to England, was nearly knocked off his feet by it as the mirrors burst and the ravens took flight, shouting the name of their king.

˳

Now he saw Childermass, cheek bloodied but unconcerned, a box clutched in his hand. Segundus felt the first tingle of his own magic at work, a fizz in his blood, and Lady Pole returned to them. He was dizzy with it, the new sea of magic rushing and foaming all around them, and with his passing through these never-ending doorways.

˳

He was glad when he had a moment to close his eyes, just a moment, and when he opened them again he was in a night-quiet library, lit by a roaring fire and a host of candles. A noise had roused him from his doze, and he turned to see Childermass standing beside him, watching him with his serious dark eyes.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, his voice soft. There was something about him, then, something unutterably gentle, and Segundus could only look up at him in wonder. “You should go to bed,” Childermass continued, his hand coming to rest on his shoulder. “Your back will not thank you if you spend the night here.” There was a smile on his lips, and his hand was warm through Segundus’ jacket.

He was a little slow with sleep, so did not think as he raised his hand to cover Childermass’.

“John,” Childermass said, his voice rough and low, but did not remove his hand. Segundus felt the world shift beneath him as it had shifted with the Stones of York. He turned his head, brought Childermass’ hand to his lips, kissed his knuckles gently. He heard the sharp intake of breath above him. He felt untethered, as if his heart was roaming his body until it found its proper place.

“John,” Childermass said again, his breath catching, and then his mouth was against Segundus’, soft lips and harsh beard. Segundus didn’t want to close his eyes, knew if he did then he would leave this moment, but it was as pointless as fighting the tide.

Childermass’ rough palm came to his cheek, and his eyes fluttered closed.

˳

When he opened his eyes again he was in that same library, the light now spilling in through the windows. Vinculus stood naked before him, Childermass clothed beside him as they laid out the things necessary for the spell. Candles and lanolin and dried carnations, books and scraps of paper and bottles of ink.

“Get on with it, then,” Vinculus said, and Segundus closed his eyes to take a deep breath.

When he next opened them, Vinculus was aglow with magic: deep purples and greens and a host of other colours he couldn’t find names for. His breath caught in his throat at the sight of it, the weft and weave of his and Childermass’ magic sinking into the man’s skin.

“Well?” Childermass asked, forced gruffness not quite hiding his own wonder.

“I don’t feel no different.” Vinculus shrugged, and turned to pull on his shirt. Segundus laughed, felt it pulled out of him quite by surprise, and his eyes closed with the force of it.

˳

He strode through another series of doors, remembered it all. He was giving lectures, hearing them, looking on with pride as Childermass addressed a group of ministers. He watched as his pupils went off into the world-

(and was that  _Wilfred Brackworth_? Segundus had heard of him, had learned his magic but had taught him his magic before that, long before)

-kept track of them and their achievements and was proud of every single one of them. He felt his bones grow heavy, his joints ache, watched the grey course through Childermass’ hair while Vinculus – older than the both of them – stayed as he was.

Door after door, gains and losses in the course of a life lived long.

He closed his eyes to stop the well of his own tears at Mr Honeyfoot’s funeral, opened them again to smile at Tom Levy’s new grandson.

˳

Now he found himself on the front step of Starecross, watching as Childermass strode down the path to his horse, the snow falling around them and chilling him to the bone, shivering from something more than the cold.

He watched silently as Childermass mounted his horse – he wanted to call it Brewer, but he knew that Brewer was now long gone – and rode off into the white wall of land and sky and snow.

He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and opened them to see the letter in his hand, sealed in black wax, and didn’t need to open it to tell what news it held. A drop of water fell on the letter and smudged his name on the front.

He closed his eyes.

˳

He was dizzy, had lost track of where or when he was by the time he opened his eyes to the ceiling of his bedroom, the pastoral cornicing he knew so well. He was tired, so tired and so heavy, and he wished that Mrs Seaton would not look so sad as she worked at her knitting.

His eyes were heavy, and without really meaning to, he closed them to darkness.


	19. Chapter 19

Waking was a physical effort. It was as though he was having to push himself through the solid murk of a laudanum dream; a whole body struggle.

When he finally wrenched his eyes open, he thought of the window in Childermass’ kitchen, of how their reflections had been doubled and superimposed, leaking over one another just by a fraction of an inch.

Two sets of memories jarred for space in his mind.

He heard his name – he thought it was his name – but whether it was from his memory or from an older, newer memory he wasn’t sure. He felt the bite of something in his palm, sharp and hot, and the world came back around him, solid and bright with an unclouded dawn. He looked around, saw Hickman watching, her eyes bright with wonder and bruised with fatigue, the pen in her hand poised unmoving over her notebook.

He saw Childermass, lying in his own circle, pushed up on his elbow and breathing heavily, his eyes wide and roving as he held a hand to his temple. Segundus lifted his hand, felt again that lance of pain that had brought him out of his daze. He brought his hand up to his face, saw the blood trickling from his palm. On ground lay the remains of the mirror he must have put his hand through as he struggled for a grip on consciousness, stained pink.

The blood brought back another surge of memory: Childermass, come to the door like an omen, face sliced from eye to jaw and painted bright with blood. He had seen him later that day, he remembered, with black feathers surrounding him like a halo and that wicked cut fully healed. It had made him dizzy, the feel of that magic. Strong, but not Childermass’, although it had hung around him, had dripped from him as though he had been soaked in it like a February snowstorm.

“John.” He looked so _young_ , sitting there surrounded by the amethyst shine of the bell heather, younger than he had ever known him. His eyes were the same, though. Yes, his eyes were the same: dark and unrelenting.

“You’re bleeding.” Childermass blinked up at him, and he found he had stumbled over to the other circle, cupped Childermass’ face in his wet and bloody hands.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I-” He was damp through with the dew he realised, and shivering uncontrollably in the brisk wind of the moors.

“Don’t be,” interrupted Childermass, covering Segundus’ hands with his own briefly before pulling them away and looking back down at them, turning them over and over to study the palms of them, the backs. “Hickman,” he called, looking over his shoulder at the professor. Segundus had almost forgotten about her, about Stallebrasse, about everything outside the two circles. “Have you got a first aid kit? I don’t think we want to be performing blood magic so soon.”

“Oh, of course.”

Segundus was aware of her movement, and the sound of the Land Rover doors opening and closing, but didn’t once look away from Childermass. He didn’t think he would have been able to peel his eyes away even if he had wanted to.

“It’s you,” Childermass said, his voice but a croak although a smile curled over his blood-stained cheek.

“It’s you,” Segundus said, and leaned down to kiss him. The candle in his chest became a fire as memory rolled over him.

This kiss, a hundred times, a hundred ways. He had felt the first one, scared and hesitant and _wanting_ , and he had felt the last, tear-stained and pleading and gone. He felt his lips on Childermass’ cheek in Lady Peckett’s Yard, felt the crushing press of him against the kitchen sink. All of them firsts. He thought this might be another.

They had been given this again, and his heart wrenched at it.

“John,” Childermass’ fingers were in his hair, pulling him back just a little, just far enough to look, and how _young_ he looked. “You’re crying.” He said it with wonder, his hand coming around, his fingers touching the dampness on Segundus’ face.

“So are you,” he pointed out, bringing his uninjured hand to wipe at the tears mingling with his own blood on Childermass’ cheek. He wiped them both away, half-expecting to find a silver scar beneath, half-surprised when he did not. “John...”

And how it felt to say that name aloud!

He remembered being so afraid of this, of using that simple name in front of anyone, convinced that the emotion in his voice would give them away, that one syllable would be enough to condemn them both. _Mr Childermass_ had always seemed the safest option, the most proper, although _John_ had always been perched just behind his teeth waiting to slip out, but every time was pulled back by the fear that crept up his throat and snatched it away at the last second. It was a name that had been reserved for their small moments of solitude, for dark rooms and warm bedchambers.

He was aware of Hickman taking his hand and wiping the blood away, checking the cut for glass, cleaning with the sharp sting of an antiseptic wipe, but it was a vague kind of awareness, like the radio in Burntwood’s shop. His mind was swirling, teeming with sounds and images and scents, faces and names, happiness and grief, and it was almost too much. He could do little more than focus on Childermass’ face.

“John,” he said again, and laughed, his cheeks still damp with tears, his uninjured hand clutched tightly in both of Childermass’.

*

The drive back to Starecross seemed to take an instant. Segundus watched out the window in wonder as the countryside flew past them faster than a gallop.

It was not new, precisely, but the newness of the old memories made him laugh with the novelty of it. Perhaps he was giddy. Perhaps this tangle of two lives’ worth of memories was too much for a human mind and this was the start of his descent to insanity. Whatever it was, he was here in this rickety, draughty Land Rover, jolting over unpaved roads on the moors with Vinculus’ sharp eyes upon him and Childermass’ hand held tightly in his own.

He knew this area, had walked it often before his joints had grown stiff and painful. He knew it usually took over an hour to walk – longer if the wind was up, if an unexpected bluster of hail blew in. It now took twenty minutes.

As soon as they arrived, Childermass was taken into the meeting room with Stallebrasse and her observer, while Segundus stayed with Hickman in her office: The need for business overtook his dawdling wonder.

“John, are you alright?” Hickman asked, her voice softer than he thought he had ever heard it.

He realised he was gazing around the room in quiet awe, recognising it as his own and trying to reconcile the differences. It was as if he were looking at the room through a pane of glass etched with the image of how it _had_ been, all those years ago, all those lives ago, and he now had to line the picture up to match the reality.

“Yes,” he said, but sounded distracted even to his own ears. “It’s just that it’s… all so much… all so different… I didn’t…”

“Do you know me?” She asked, her eyes firm on him as if he was a schoolboy being scolded, and when he looked at her it helped to anchor him to _now_.

“Yes, I know you. Professor Alice Hickman, eleventh Chancellor of Starecross.” He laughed a little, couldn’t help it. “If Norrell knew, you know, he’d have a blue fit.” He laughed again at the look on her face, at the thought of Norrell’s reaction, at the nerve of saying it out loud. “A _University_? For _Magicians_? And being run by a _woman_ of all things!”

“There have been four female Chancellors over the years,” Hickman pointed out in solid tones, her eyebrow arching.

“Oh, I know, and I think it’s wonderful, just as it should be, but Norrell would be _apoplectic_.” He smiled at her in apology, and glanced to the door of the meeting room. “Even the thought of Chil- of John doing what he did, before, rising to where he was would have been too much, I fear.”

He felt the laugh rise up in him, bubbling from nothing, and heard the edge of hysteria in it. He clamped a hand over his mouth.

There was a current running through his body. He felt jittery, restless, unsure of what to do with himself. There was so much swarming inside him, memories and details not just of the past, but of this present life long forgotten, disturbed like silt on a riverbed during a flood: a new course being drawn by overabundance.

He wanted to speak to Childermass, to establish if he was in as much turmoil, but he had been whisked off by Stallebrasse before they could speak properly. They had both known this would happen; it was part of the verification strategy – both pulled aside separately and interviewed before they had travelled to the moor to do the spell, silly questions on history and magic and their personal history, the beady red eye of a video camera blinking at them steadily – but Segundus couldn’t fathom how he would make it through that time now. There was so much surging inside him, too many thoughts to straighten out into anything that might make sense.

He realised only when Hickman handed him a tissue that he was crying again, the surge inside escaping the only way it could.

“How does it feel?” She asked, curiosity spiking in her voice, and he couldn’t answer.

His words had vanished. He was reduced to shaking his head, silently and calmly weeping, until Childermass came back through from the meeting room. His face was not tear-stained as Segundus’ was, but there hung around his eyes an air of suspicion, as if he didn’t entirely believe in the world around him. Segundus got to his feet and walked past him to his own interview, their hands clutching briefly as they passed.

Focusing on the specific points centred him a little, helped him concentrate on distinguishing between the memories – much to his surprise. Stallebrasse’s intent stare and no-nonsense attitude no doubt, he later realised, had a similar effect.

Some questions were the same as he had been asked before (“ _Who was the Prime Minister in 1848?_ ”, and before he hadn’t had a clue, and kicked himself now because _of course_ it was Lord John Russell, he had had him for tea shortly after the election, and did you know he took a real liking for Mrs Whetstone’s parkin?), some were new (“ _What were the reasons for the publication of_ A Complete Account of the Stream and River Spirits of the Esk Valley _in 1827_ _?_ ”, a famously divisive tract that he now knew had been written by Miss Charlotte Redruth as a dare by Miss Margaret Frye, to see if a blatantly terrible article written under a male pseudonym would be published in preference to an article of quality by a female author, and explained as much to Stallebrasse and her companion, describing how he had not exactly _discouraged_ the act at the time).

Some questions were more personal in nature, and these he found the most bewildering. When Stallebrasse asked him to describe a childhood memory, he was assaulted by a flurry of images. It took him almost three whole minutes to grasp one firmly enough to get a clear picture of it, to make it seem _real_ (he described a trip he had taken with his mother to Brighton – they had gone in the hopes that the sea air might improve her health. It had not. While there, however, he had been accosted by a woman who had staggered out of her yellow-curtained tent in order to read the lines on his palm. She had stared at his hand very intently for some moments, before letting out a great huffing breath as if berating him for wasting her time, and stomping back to her tent. His aunt – who had accompanied them – had been quite as startled as he had, and they had both blinked rather stupidly at the tent before moving on. Yet the image still overlapped with another time, another Brighton, later in another life).

Throughout the interview he was aware of how restless he must seem, but he was utterly unable to sit still and face his questioners, no matter how he tried. His head craned around to frown at the new ceiling in the room (who had decided the room needed _downlighters_ , of all things? This room had had the most beautiful cornicing), his hands fidgeting at the strange fabric of his jacket and shirt, his feet flexing inside his shoes, until eventually Stallebrasse herself seemed to lose patience with him. It wasn’t long before he was released, set free to wander the house as he wished.

*

Starecross was a marvel.

He spent almost an hour in the library – not even reading, just pacing the room, trailing his fingers over the books on the shelves, and simply remembering.

There were some of his own books on the shelves now – he had never had them in the library, indeed had always thought it would be rather too self-congratulatory – and he found he was a little pleased now to see them, like happening upon an old friend.

Picking up a copy of _The Life of Jonathan Strange_ (first edition), he opened it and read the inscription: _To my dearest friend John, with all the thanks in the world for your invaluable help and support, J.S_. He had to laugh a little to himself at that.

As he browsed, he became aware that there were a couple of biographies of Segundus himself on the shelves – much slimmer, more modern volumes than Strange’s –  which he didn’t dare pick up and found more than a little bizarre.

It was particularly confusing, Segundus found, to wander around a building he knew – a building he himself had planned and decorated – and find it different to when he had last seen it. He would wander along the corridor to what he _knew_ was the junior students’ dormitory, only to find it had been covered in cheap blue linoleum and filled with modern white laboratory benches. More than anything, it reminded him of his own days at university, the most recent days.

The kitchen was still a kitchen, but of a less stalwart sort. Instead of Mrs Whetstone’s heavy oak work table, there were now half a dozen small round tables on the worn flagstone floor, each with half a dozen lightweight chairs crowding around them. Where the great handsome dresser had been, there was now a line of fitted MDF cabinets topped with a kettle, tubs of coffee granules and teabags, and a grubby white microwave. The great stone fireplace, however, still dominated the space, although the cold and empty hearth struck at something within him like iron on rock.

His own office was now Hickman’s, which he couldn’t grudge, but he found it was the smallest things that made him dizzy: the desk at the wrong side of the room, the bleak and beautiful painting of the moors above the fireplace instead of his sturdy old mirror, the fire itself no longer functional but filled with an arrangement of artificial flowers.

He climbed the stairs to his rooms and found these almost exactly as he remembered them. He remembered asking for this, talking to Tom Levy and writing it down in important documents. Someone had added electric lights at some point in the past, but the bed was the same, his desk was the same. It was all so neatly preserved – free even from dust – that Segundus was quite unsure what to do with himself. He felt again as if he were slipping sideways, as if there were too many memories crowding for attention at once, and almost fell into the chair at the – _his_ – desk.

“They’ve turned my room into the bursar’s office.” Childermass’ voice startled him a little. When Segundus turned to look at him, he was standing with his shoulder propped against the doorway, an ironic smile on his face.

“Well,” Segundus replied with a smile that turned into something more, “you never did spend much time there.”

Childermass snorted and stepped into the room. He looked around, ran his hand along the fabric of the bed-curtain. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and stepped up to Segundus. He cupped his jaw, gently, as if Segundus was some small, brittle-boned creature. He wasn’t sure himself that he wasn’t.

“Are you well, John?” Childermass asked, and Segundus opened his eyes to look up at him. It was not a passing curiosity, not a question asked out of politeness, but a real query. He would never have expected anything other from this man, and could not answer with anything less than honesty.

“I am tired,” he said, and placed his hand on the warm skin of Childermass’ wrist. He felt his pulse flutter beneath the skin, felt the solidity of muscle and bone beneath that. “I keep forgetting where I am, like I’m slipping between two versions of myself, and I’m a little worried I’ll get stuck between them.” He closed his eyes, sighed, pressed his face into the rough warmth of Childermass’ palm. “And you? How are you?”

Childermass’ thumb brushed against his temple, and he was suddenly aware of how thin his skull was there, felt himself tremble as he remembered how he knew that.

“Much the same,” Childermass answered after a moment of thought. He brought his other hand to Segundus’ face, so he was enclosed on all sides. “Were you ever so young?” Childermass asked, more breath than speech, and when Segundus looked up at him, his eyes were sad and far away.

“I don’t know if I was. I certainly don’t feel it.”

He tugged on Childermass’ forearms, gently urged him to kneel in front of the chair. His knees didn’t creak, didn’t crack, and that meant something, too. He leaned forward, caught Childermass’ lips in a kiss, ran his right hand into his hair and kept hold of Childermass’ hand with his left.

“I don’t think _you_ ever were,” he said when he pulled back, looking at the skin of Childermass’ face, already forming into lines at the corners of his mouth and between his eyebrows. He pressed his thumb over this last crease, pressed his lips against it a moment later.

“I think you’re right.” Childermass looked up at him, a humourless laugh hidden in his eyes and the line of his mouth. “You’re frowning,” he said, and squeezed Segundus’ hand. “Have I upset you?”

It was a jest, a nudge to get a rise out of him, but Segundus realised that it was true.

“Yes,” he said, because they were centuries past lying to each other. “You have.”

All at once, his throat filled with broken glass and his eyes burned as he stroked his fingertips over Childermass’ temple, the paper-thin skin no protection over delicate bone.

“I told you not to go,” he said, and felt the tears fall from his eyes as his hands dropped to Childermass’ shoulders and clung tight.

It had been too late, too cold, the horse was no Brewer and had no footing in that weather, startled too easily, the winter had already claimed two vagrants near Danby – he was aware of saying these things to Childermass, forcing them out past the sobs that were wracking through him now, his face burning with the rage and grief and tears that had hit him like a train, his heart breaking again in his chest, splintering apart and shredding his insides until it felt like there wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t bleeding.

“Shhh,” Childermass said into his ear, “shhh.” And he realised he had slumped into Childermass’ arms, off of his chair.

“I told you not to go, but you did anyway, and you didn’t come back.”

“I wouldn’t have gone if I had known it would happen,” Childermass said, which was as much of an apology as Segundus knew he would ever get, but it wasn’t enough. And truly, it hadn’t been far to Kildale, a journey they had each made many times before, and the thaw _had_ started – but they had both lived on the moors for too long to believe things like a change in the weather.

“I had to go to Guisborough!” Segundus cried, speaking and crying both the same thing at this point, but he needed Childermass to know, needed him to understand. “I had to go to Guisborough and make sure it was you, to make the arrangements.” He sobbed again, shuddering with it, and it was a few minutes before he could speak again. “I had to look at you – your ruined face-” he looked up at Childermass once more, touched his shaking fingers to his left temple, “-and hold myself together as if we were _colleagues_ , as if my heart wasn’t crumbling to ash, and when I came back here it was even worse – nobody- nobody-”

“Shhh,” Childermass said again, pressing Segundus’ face to his chest, letting him hear the solid, steady beat of his heart. “We’re alright, now, my love.”

“I wasn’t,” Segundus said again, but quiet now, his face stinging against the salt of his own tears soaking through Childermass’ shirt even as he buried closer to him. “I’m _not_.”

He breathed deeply, filled his lungs with the scent of Childermass, the one that was so similar but not quite right, or not quite as it had been, anyway, but still warm and familiar. He clutched at his shoulders and pulled himself closer, until his nose was pressed so tightly to Childermass’ chest that he thought it might break.

Childermass held him there until he calmed. He wasn’t sure how long they stayed there, but it was long enough for his knees to ache against the wooden floor, for his face to feel raw from rubbing against the salt-drenched cotton of Childermass’ shirt. He sat back slowly, keeping his hands on Childermass’ arms.

He took a breath to speak, but the slight shake of Childermass’ head stopped the apology in his throat, and then Childermass was pulling him forward again, kissing each of his eyelids, his cheeks, the frown between his brows, and lastly his mouth.

He tasted of salt, of Segundus’ own tears on his lips.

“If I had known what would happen – that it would cause you so much pain, I would never have gone.”

“I told you it would, and you went anyway.”

Childermass said nothing to that, only kissed him again, softly, and Segundus tasted the apology he would never hear, but it was almost as good. He accepted it with the push of his own lips, with his hand on Childermass’ rough cheek.

“I love you,” Childermass said, his voice low and rough, his eyes closed as he pressed his forehead against Segundus’. “You knew that, didn’t you? You _know_ that?”

“Of course,” Segundus answered, nudging his nose against Childermass’, touching their lips together for the briefest instant before pulling away. “But that didn’t help when you were gone.”

He watched Childermass’ dark eyes open, watched all he had said swarm in those black pools like a scrying dish.

*

The bed was softer than he remembered, softer than it looked.

Childermass had offered to take him home, but _home_ was a nebulous word now, something he was finding more difficult to define. Images swam before him when he tried to think of it – his father’s house, the great house in which he had grown long before then and where his mother had died, his small Hackney bedsit (although that wasn’t right, had never been right, had been _home_ more as a shorthand than as a truth), Childermass’ small flat, his rooms at Mrs Pleasance’s – and oh, that had set him off thinking of Mrs Pleasance, of how little she had changed, in fact, how much was familiar even outwith the _magic_ of it all…

He had declined the offer, had wanted to get used to one place before anywhere else sent his head spinning even faster than it was already. Childermass had nodded as he had explained, had kept hold of his hands as they spoke and really, had Childermass ever _touched_ him so much? So freely?

So he stayed. So he convinced Childermass to stay. He didn’t think he could have coped, spending another empty night in this bed, not after all the nights that had gone before.

Enclosed behind the curtains on the cold July night, he was glad for the barrier, gladder still for Childermass’ steady breath beside him.

His dreams were perhaps not dreams, were as much dreams as those early visions of Childermass had been, before all of this had started. They were restless, swarming, leaving him as disorientated as the magic itself had.

˳

_Disappointment swallowed his guts as the man got to his feet. He could not quite shake the idea that this dark man, who had until a moment ago been lounging quite at his ease on the front steps, was some kind of apparition. He knew what he was going to say even before he opened his mouth. It had been looming over him since he had first discussed it with Mrs Lennox._

_“Mr Segundus, you cannot do this.”_

_˳_

_“What is it?” Childermass’ breath puffed warm across his chest, his head heavy and warm._

_“Nothing.” He pressed a kiss to the top of Childermass’ head._

_“It’s not ‘nothing’.” The shape of his smile pressed against Segundus’ skin, as plain as if he could see it. “You’ve been staring at me for the last twenty minutes.” He settled more comfortably against Segundus, throwing an arm across his waist with a sigh. “It can set a man’s nerves on edge, that kind of scrutiny.”_

_“I was merely admiring your hair.” Warmth bubbled up in Segundus’ chest as he ran his fingers through the strands in question, soft and shining in the morning light. “It really is rather lovely when it has been washed.”_

_“I struggle to remember why people praise your manners, you know.”_

_˳_

_“Are you sure it is him?” He asked, forcing the words through the tightness of his throat. They came out steadier than he had expected._

_“We know Mr Childermass, sir,” the man said. His face was etched with regret, his hat clutched tight against his chest. “We don’ have any doubt.”_

_“May I see him? I would like to be sure.” He was grateful for his gloves for hiding his white-knuckle grip on his walking stick and the trembling in his hands._

_“I don’t know, sir. We would need to fetch the doctor.”_

_“Please.”_

˳

When he woke, his usual melancholy settled on him, seeping into his heavy bones. He screwed his eyes shut and pressed his face to the pillow so that he could pretend, just for a moment, that the warmth beside him was more than his own body heat trapped by the sheets.

It was worse this morning than usual – it always was in the summer, when it was not the season associated with his loss and the weather was not as raw as his soul – so much worse that he imagined a hand on his side, lips against his neck. He must still be dreaming, he realised, and closed his eyes to it.

He knew he would regret this wallowing, this pretence, when he rose for his toilet, but knew also that the edge would be taken from it by the time he got down to breakfast, to the boisterous noise of two-dozen boys in the dining room.

Only when the hand on his side rose to press hot as the sun against his breastbone did he remember himself, remember all that had happened.

He turned over in the bed and wrapped his arms around the solid, slender shape of Childermass, pressed his face to his stubble-rough neck and breathed him in, lungs trembling with it. Childermass’ hands came to his shoulders, gripped them tight and warm, and pressed him to his chest, pressed his lips and then his cheek against Segundus’ hair.

“Tha’ll be reet,” rumbled Childermass, his hand cradling the back of Segundus’ head.

Childermass continued to hum quietly, a tune that just escaped Segundus’ memory. He closed his eyes and pressed his face more firmly to the crook of Childermass’ neck, let the warmth of him melt those splintered pieces inside him, let the vibrations from his chest settle them back into place to solidify once more. It seemed years since he had been so close, so surrounded by the heat and the scent of him.

The light was filtering in even through the bedcurtains by the time Segundus felt able to pull himself reluctantly away.

The ease with which he got out of bed was astounding, free from aching joints and heavy bones. The melancholy that had settled over him on waking dissipated further, burnt off by Childermass’ warmth and the joy of his own simple movements.


	20. Chapter 20

The new day brought with it a lighter feeling in his chest, a reduction in the restlessness in his mind and limbs. He left Childermass to get dressed, and headed through the labyrinthine passageways of Starecross.

The way was familiar, though the scenery was altered. Today he did not see both at once, but could feel the shape of the past at the back of his mind. It was a comfortable weight, less disorientating in the light of this new day.

He settled himself with a cup of tea in the strange new kitchen, watched over by the enormous old fireplace, the many paintings of the moors and dales, and the engravings of now-ancient acts of magic (but he still knew the way they had felt new and thrilling, once upon a time – the way they had made his heart and mind leap). It recalled to him the times when he had just taken over the care of Starecross, before the school had started – just Segundus taking his solitary breakfast in the kitchen, reflecting on acts of magic.

It was not to remain a peaceful scene of reflection.

“Thank the Lord!” Vinculus exclaimed, skulking towards him from the corridor. “The centuries have cured you of that accursed early waking.”

“And they seem to have cured you of staying abed until three,” replied Segundus, regarding Vinculus with a smile over the rim of his mug. He was unaccountably pleased to see the man. Vinculus grinned sharply at him.

“They say old men sleep less,” he said with a shrug. Vinculus turned to busy himself at the counter. When he spoke again his tone was quite different. “And there are few as old as me nowadays.”

There was a bitterness to his voice that Segundus had seldom heard, but he felt ill-placed to question him further. Besides, he doubted Vinculus would answer with anything more than a facetious remark. Vinculus snorted to himself and stood to take a turn around the kitchen as he waited for the toaster. He spread his arms wide, gesturing at the surrounds.

“They’ve made some changes, you’ll notice.” He threw himself into the chair beside Segundus. “Most of it’s an improvement, I’d say. It’s a damn sight warmer.”

Segundus watched him for a moment, taking in the careless drape of his arm over the back of the chair, and took the only tack he thought might earn him a reasonably honest answer.

“Have you been treated well, Vinculus?” he asked. He peered more closely, saw past the weave of magic surrounding the man to the brittle lines of his shoulders and spine.

“He’s been treated like a prince, don’t let him fool you.” The voice from the door was gruff, but Segundus caught the affection in it. He turned to see Childermass smiling at them, propped against the doorframe. “He regaled me with his history yesterday while you spoke with Stallebrasse.”

“You might think so,” Vinculus said with a sneer, “but _you_ didn’t have to survive Shaftoe’s craze for Fletcherism.” He gave a shudder and wandered back to his breakfast preparations. “Thank God he was short-lived.”

While Vinculus’ back was turned, Childermass stepped up to Segundus’ chair, reached forward to push the hair back from Segundus’ temple.

“How are you feeling?” His fingers came to rest against Segundus’ jaw, light and cool. Segundus glanced, hesitating, at Vinculus before reaching up to catch them in his own.

As he hesitated, he was side-swiped by a thought- a vision- an especially vivid bout of déjà vu: late evening in the parlour, sitting on the arm of Childermass’ chair to better read the paper they were discussing, Childermass’ arm warm around his waist keeping him steady where he perched; a snort from the chaise by the window, Vinculus up and looking at them before Segundus had a chance to spring away. They had forgotten he was there. Segundus’ heart had leapt to his throat, limbs tensed but immobile, but Vinculus had only regarded them silently for a moment before rolling his eyes in the manner of a mother indulging her child’s foolishness, and shuffled off to bed. It was so vivid that he could smell the fire, feel the hard arm of the chair beneath his thigh. He let himself feel it, let it run its course and wash over him.

“Better, I think,” he answered, smiling up and gripping Childermass’ fingers more tightly. “And you?”

“Better,” Childermass said.

Vinculus’ toast popped. Childermass’ hand slipped from Segundus’ and he stepped over to fill the kettle. A moment later Hickman entered the room with Stallebrasse.

“Ah, good, you’re up,” she said to the room at large, striding over to the counter. Stallebrasse settled herself into the chair beside Vinculus and declared that she would have her tea with milk and one spoonful of sugar. “I trust you slept well?”

“Yes, excellently,” Segundus said. “Thank you.”

“Good,” she said, almost before he had closed his mouth. “We should work on the paper today, while things are still fresh in mind.” She fixed her gaze on Segundus, and he could see her excitement and determination. The look told him exactly why she had been Starecross’ youngest Chancellor when appointed.

Childermass slid into the seat beside Segundus with a mug of tea, and pushed a plate of pastries in front of him. Segundus wasn’t sure where he had found these. Perhaps in that strange no-man’s land between lives yesterday, that moment between closing his eyes for the final time and opening them to the bright dawn, he had uncovered a spell for the procurement of pâtisserie.

“I, erm,” he said, somewhat distracted by Childermass tearing apart a croissant beside him. “Yes, of course.”

“John,” Hickman said, turning to Childermass as she brought tea over for herself and Stallebrasse. “I’d like you to work with Lady Stallebrasse on the report for the Trustees and the Cinque Dragownes – Banbrook had to get back to London last night, but he left his notes.”

Childermass, mouth full of pastry, merely nodded towards Stallebrasse in affirmation, although Segundus noticed the twitch of a smile.

With news and plans thus deployed, breakfast proceeded in a slightly awkward fashion. Hickman spent most of the meal staring rather intently between Segundus and Childermass as if trying to spot some difference in their appearances (Segundus wondered what she saw, and worried that his eyes may still be red from yesterday. He made himself another cup of tea to hide the embarrassment on his face as he remembered the number of tears he had shed in full view of so many people).

Meanwhile Stallebrasse listened with a stiff spine to Vinculus’ tale of the time in, oh, 1893 when he had snuck out from under the watch of Acworth and made it as far as Wetherby to the racecourse, where he had charmed no fewer than three ladies, won five pounds on a bet, and started a fight between two gentlemen which turned into nothing short of a brawl. He seemed very pleased with himself on this account. Stallebrasse merely raised an imperious eyebrow and inquired, “Indeed?”

Throughout this, Segundus was aware of Childermass’ knee nudging against his under the table, but he refused to be drawn to look at him, as he didn’t think he would be able to keep his composure if he met his eye, and that wouldn’t do.

Segundus excused himself (with no small relief) from this odd gathering to retrieve his notes from his room, and then made his way to Hickman’s office.

Once there, she explained the notes she had taken during the spell and what she had witnessed, and he compared them to the notes they had made beforehand and his own experiences. Everything, for once, had gone more-or-less as expected, which made him a little suspicious. He was so far the only drawback – he had been unable to write his post-spell notes immediately as they had planned, so he sat and wrote what he could now.

Writing further helped him sift through his confusion, and he mentioned to Hickman how senseless he thought anything he might have written yesterday would have turned out. She laughed a little and looked over his shoulder.

“Your handwriting has changed,” Hickman pointed out. She gestured to the notes he had made earlier in their work, and to the paragraph he was just writing.

It was indeed different – his earlier had been more perfunctory, a little crowded, but now, although it remained recognisably _his_ , it resembled the writing on the spell and the letter a little more. It had, he thought, a little more of a flourish about it.

“So it has,” he smiled.

He set back to trying to get his thoughts onto paper in a way that made some kind of sense, and she turned back to her own notes.

“You seem more settled today,” she commented after a few more minutes of quiet work. He thought about it for a moment before answering.

“I think I am. A good night’s sleep is the cure for many ills.”

“The room was alright?” She was looking at him in a way that reminded him rather of Childermass, as if the question she was asking was not the one she was looking for the answer to.

He regarded her carefully, trying to see behind the words to what she really wanted to know. It didn’t do much good. He had, he realised, far more practice with Childermass, and even then still struggled on occasion. He resigned himself to answering the question she _had_ asked.

“It was excellent – almost exactly as it was. Although the electric lights and the heating make an enormous difference.”

She smiled at him a little sideways and nodded before looking back at her notes.

“John stayed with you last night, didn’t he?” She asked the question lightly, casting her eyes over her notes rather than him, but his heart froze. “I was going to arrange another room for him, but you both disappeared after dinner.”

“He did.” He answered, trying to swallow. “The Bursar claimed his room for an office sometime in the last two-hundred years, it seems. I gather these things tend to happen when a place is left under someone else’s care for any extended period of time.”

“I suppose they do,” she said with a small smile. She turned back to her computer and began typing. She continued after a moment, “Just after the spell,” and he breathed a small sigh of relief that they were back to work, “you kissed.”

“I… Did we?” He stuttered a laugh that rang false even to his own ears. “Oh, we were both in rather a muddle then – you must have noticed?”

“I did,” she said, looking at him steadily now, and nodded slowly. She kept her gaze on him a moment longer before tilting her head to the side. “It seemed the thing each of you was least muddled about.”

He looked at her for a long time, felt the hardness creeping over his own face as he did so. She kept his gaze solidly, betraying nothing but bland curiosity. He wasn’t sure what she was driving at – if she knew, if she _wanted_ to know, what her reaction would be. She was impossible to read, refusing to lead his response with even the flicker of an eyelid.

His senses picked up an echo – the crinkle of a newspaper, a flash of text, the name of a friend in harsh black type, time and time again. A band tightened around his heart, and he swallowed in an attempt to banish it. It was difficult to narrow down the memory to one occasion: it had happened so often, the details only varying in the name and occupation of the man concerned, occasionally the rush of relief when the end of the paragraph read merely ‘pillory’, and how furious he was that he could reduce that to ‘merely’. He had lost count.

Once, Childermass had laid a hand on his shoulder and asked why he still read the accounts if they upset him so. He had answered that he had to _know_ , and had railed against the injustice of it – but only privately, unable as he was to risk his own exposure – or worse: Childermass’ – all the while chastising himself as a coward.

Now he looked at Hickman, but did not see her at all.

He thought he felt the ghost of a rope around his neck – indeed, had felt it through much of his life, the impossible weight of it, the chafing of it across his soul. But more recent memories also coursed through his mind, swirling with those older and heavier: his father, red faced and shouting as a photograph curled and blackened in the fire; strangers hurling sharp words at him in the street, even in Soho.

He thought of the letter that had reached him a year after William had left Oxford, the one that had shattered his heart, telling him that his friend faced a long and undignified goodbye that the government hadn’t cared much about while it had only affected people like _him_ – swept it under the rug like everything else in their supposedly seedy underworld. He remembered the funeral, rows upon rows of friends in the pews, but only one relation: a stony-faced sister, her rage radiating but indistinct in its target.

He saw the graffiti in public loos, on the sides of buildings, in university lecture theatres carved into the desks in impassioned biro. Crude cartoons and ‘hilarious’ accusations that left him feeling scooped hollow and unwelcome.

But, creeping into the spaces of these jagged-clawed thoughts, he remembered Mrs Pleasance patting his hand warmly and inviting John to supper. He saw Mrs Lennox smiling at him as she sipped her tea, aware but only amused that his heart was clattering in his chest like a wild bird.

He thought of Arabella Strange embracing him while struggled to hold himself together as the snow blustered against the window, each of them widowed in ways no-one else could understand.

He looked at Hickman and tried to decipher which of these reactions she might show.

Then he realised – so suddenly he was almost swept under by the strength of the feeling in him, almost laughed with the relief of it – that he was through lying and pretending. He had spent a lifetime and more terrified to let the truth of himself be known. He had read of the fates of too many friends and acquaintances in the newspapers and records of the assizes to be scared in this new age. He had avoided two death sentences: Hickman’s disapproval was nothing.

No matter Hickman’s reaction – whether she forced him from Starecross or refused to work with him any longer – his life and Childermass’ were no longer at risk, nor their liberty. Neither of them had any particular status to lose in these new lives – what they wanted to do, they could do anywhere. He quite simply no longer cared. Let them run off to France if need be. It would hurt him to leave Starecross again, but he could do it, he would do it.

“And what would it matter?” He asked, feeling his spine straighten as he met her eyes.

“Not a jot,” she said, one eyebrow rising up her forehead and a spark creeping back into her eyes. “Other than settling a few tiffs between certain historians.”

He blinked at this, and frowned. Whatever reaction he had been expecting from her, this was not it. She laughed.

“You claim to be a student of magic, but don’t even stay up to date with publications.”

“I’ve always been more interested in magic itself than in magicians,” he said, rather testily. This was mostly a lie: he had always been interested in magicians in general, but had always felt it too strange to read about a man with his name.

“Oh, there’s been great debate over the last decade or so – in certain circles – about your… _bachelorhood_ , shall we say? Jackson Sennitt has made a particular study of your letters, came here especially to look through the genuine articles. I’m sure there’s an article of his in one of the more recent _Journals of Magical History_ – last December I think. Last I spoke to him he was working on a book.”

The intent look on her face had crossed into one of amusement, and Segundus – despite the unsettling news that he was apparently worthy of decades of study – found himself relaxing.

“Oh,” he said, deflating rather at being denied an argument. “I’d never thought I was so interesting.”

Hickman laughed at this, and they – much to Segundus’ relief – went back to evaluating the spell. It was a productive couple of hours, and as they worked the argument slipped to the back of his mind, pushed by their discussions of the technicalities of the spell, of whether a skimmer of clarity and easefulness might have prevented the confusion that had plagued both Segundus and Childermass yesterday.

“What I would like to know,” Hickman started almost absentmindedly as they packed away. It was this tone that gave her away, as Segundus had never known her to do anything absentmindedly. “Is if it’s historical or a recent development? Not that I want to pry,” she added, then cut a sharp smile across at him, “but I want to pry. Call it professional curiosity.”

Segundus blushed and busied himself sorting out his notebooks. “I don’t see what bearing it has on-”

“Ahhh.” Hickman raised an eyebrow at him again. “So even before the spell…?”

“Not that _that_ , particularly, is any of your business, but yes.”

“I had wondered,” she said, and laughed as he fled the room.

Clutching his notebooks to his chest as he travelled along the corridor to his rooms, he heard a burst of laughter and, despite the embarrassment still swirling inside him, couldn’t help but follow it.

He peered around the doorway of what had once been the senior boys’ dormitory but was now a staff lounge, and saw Childermass sitting at ease on a comfortable-looking sofa, laughing quite naturally with Fenella Stallebrasse over coffee. Childermass caught sight of him and grinned more widely than Segundus had seen since before the spell. Had it only been yesterday? It felt as though years had passed.

“John, stop your lurking and come here.” He beckoned Segundus in. “Did you know Lady Stallebrasse was a friend of your Henry Woodhope’s grandson?”

“Who are you to tell anyone off for lurking?” Segundus chastised as he entered, and was rewarded by another rumble of laughter. He turned to Stallebrasse once he had taken a seat. “Did you really? Henry’s son was such a charming boy – he nearly came to us here, but Henry had been rather turned against magic by the whole affair in Venice. I think he was sent to Harrow instead.” He laughed a little, couldn’t help himself, and said, “I didn’t realise I knew that.”

“Well, David once said that he had inherited an interest in magic from his father,” Stallebrasse said, regarding Segundus with a look that was at once penetrating and amused. “I only knew him for a couple of years, really – he was very old even then, much as I am now - but he was a fascinating man.”

“Arabella Strange – she used to bring her nephew here on visits… oh, what was his name?”

“Joseph,” Childermass said, with a fond smile. “He was more like Bell than his father, I think.”

It was easy to fall into reminiscence, wonderful to hear Stallebrasse talk of the people they had not quite known, of the famous magicians she had worked with they had only heard of, the ones who had fallen into that strange crevasse between their experiences. Segundus was pleased to find that, contrary to his first impression, she was warm and drily funny, and he silently wondered how she managed to keep such a flint-hard exterior in her official duties.

“You’re surprised,” she said to him as he raised a hand to his mouth when she startled a laugh from him, her grey eyes sparking, “that I have a sense of humour.”

It wasn’t a question. He wondered again at the wire-brush she seemed able to take to one’s soul to read one’s thoughts.

“Not surprised, no,” he answered honestly, and Childermass laughed quietly. “It’s just that you were so stern before the spell, and in the interviews. I am… impressed that you manage to be both, but not unkind.”

She laughed as if he had just told an exceedingly good joke, and he couldn’t help but smile in return.

“Not all of us can be as simple-natured as you, John,” Childermass put in, laughing himself.

Segundus felt himself colour. “I may not be able to shroud myself in mysteries like some, but I don’t believe I’m quite as-”

“I only mean,” Childermass interrupted, no longer laughing aloud although the glimmer of it stayed in his eyes, “that it has been a surprise to many to find out that you are exactly as you seem to be on the surface. It wouldn’t suit many, but works well on you.”

“You will turn even an insult to flattery, won’t you?” Segundus asked, but fondly.

“I said simple-natured, not simple-minded. Don’t get mardy.” With an exasperated sigh he turned to Stallebrasse. “You would think a school-master would know better how to listen.”

It was as Childermass and Stallebrasse laughed together that Hickman appeared at the door, looking around the room in gentle amusement.

“Glad to see everyone’s getting on,” she said, deadpan. “I hate to break up a party, but your taxi’s here, Fenella.”

“Oh, thank you, Alice.” The older woman was still regaining her breath as she got stiffly to her feet.

The men followed her to the front hall. The oblique late afternoon sun spilled in through the windows, the lattice draping the room in distorted, insubstantial lace. Watching it, feeling the warmth of it on his skin, he thought they could have been in any century since the house had been built.

Stallebrasse shook their hands in turn, firmly enclosing theirs in both of hers.

“It has been marvellous meeting you,” she said, serious once more. “And such a tremendous honour. Thank you, Alice, for allowing me to be involved.”

“Ha!” Hickman exclaimed, taking Stallebrasse’s hands in her own. “Who else do you think I would rather have? Leach?” She kissed Stallebrasse on each cheek and the women laughed together at some private joke.

The taxi outside tooted its horn, and Hickman laughed. With a last farewell to the men, Stallebrasse went out of the door and over the bridge to the car, taking Hickman’s arm for support. Segundus stood beside Childermass in the porch and watched.

“Emma would have liked her, don’t you think?” He asked, linking his arm through Childermass’.

“I don’t know,” Childermass answered, looking out over the hills. “She’s still a magician.”

“Oh, she put up with you well enough,” Segundus laughed. “Eventually.”

“Once she’d got over the urge to shoot me.” His grin was crooked but wide as he looked at Segundus, who rolled his eyes. “Ay up.” Childermass said suddenly, tilting his chin to the horizon, and to the figure coming across the old pack-horse bridge that had caught his eye. “Where’s this one been to?”

“Oh,” Vinculus sighed, coming to a stop in front of them. “If it isn’t love’s young dream.”

Segundus fought the instinct to snatch his arm away from Childermass, but the look in Vinculus’ eye was weary rather than disgusted, and in any case seemed to be looking beyond them.

“Where’ve you been, then, Methuselah?” Childermass asked, trying to see where Vinculus had come from. “I didn’t think Hickman liked letting you out to scare the locals.”

“Thought I’d take a refreshing walk, what with all the excitement yesterday. Needed something to calm the nerves.” Vinculus grinned at them as he shouldered past into the Hall. “We immortal beings need to get out the house every fifty years or so, you know. It’s in the care guidelines right alongside ‘fresh straw on the floor’.”

They watched as he climbed the stairs back to his rooms.

*

The afternoon drew on long and uneventful. Hickman freed them from any need for work, worried, she claimed, that overtaxing them might lead to adverse effects (although she didn’t seem happy about it). That skimmer of clarity, she said, was looking more necessary.

Segundus understood her worry, but felt himself more stable than he had been the day before, perhaps more stable than he had felt in weeks. The memories came to him in the strangest moments – fragments of a day-to-day life that would have seemed so below notice that he wondered at having remembered them at all (why, on picking up his pen, had he experienced so strong a recollection of the exact weight and sound of opening his favourite inkpot?) – but he knew now what they were and so they did not puzzle him as they had, and they came at a more sedate pace so that he was not overwhelmed.

Childermass however, never a man much given to idleness, grew in restlessness as the day wore on. Segundus, sitting in a comfortable chair in the Old Library – near the fireplace out of habit rather than any provision of warmth – watched from the corner of his eye as Childermass picked up first one book, then another, flicking through and discarding them as quickly, pacing up and down the line of the shelves as he peered at the spines.

After perhaps half an hour, he seemed to grow tired of this and walked to look out of the window, arms crossed as he gazed out across the garden with narrowed eyes. Segundus stood to join him. He placed a hand on Childermass’ shoulder, and through it felt the tension in him.

“Perhaps if you tell me, it might help,” he said softly, squeezing Childermass’ shoulder. He recognised in him the strange breed of restlessness that he had himself been plagued by yesterday. Then, Childermass had stood so calm and solid; the least he could do was to try his best for him now.

Childermass only shook his head, his breath escaping hard through his nose.

It had never been any use, Segundus knew, to coax Childermass into talking when he did not wish to. Instead, he did what little he could. He pressed his hand to Childermass’ forearm and squeezed, felt the muscle warm and tense beneath his sleeve. This was at least enough to get Childermass to look at him.

Childermass laid a hand on top of Segundus’, palm as rough as it had always been, and gave a tight smile that was at odds with the lost look in his eyes.

“Thank you, my love.”

“You will tell me,” Segundus said, frowning up at Childermass and pushing a lock of hair away from his face, “if it gets difficult? And let me know what I might do to help?”

Childermass laughed a little, lifted Segundus’ hand from his arm to his lips, kissed his knuckles gently. It was silly, Segundus thought, how so mild a gesture could still set his insides fluttering.

“You have my word.” He looked at Segundus a moment longer, the skin beneath his eyes dark as the clouds gathering on the horizon. “Perhaps you could read to me,” he suggested, gesturing at the books he had left scattered across the desks with a wry smile. “It seems I don’t have the patience for it myself.”

“Of course,” Segundus agreed eagerly, and stepped back to select a volume. “ _The lamp must be replenish'd, but even then it will not burn so long as I must watch_ …” Childermass snorted at his choice of reading, but raised no objections.

He read aloud, Childermass listening while watching the racing clouds from the window, until Hickman came to invite them to dinner.

They sat in the private kitchen of Hickman’s apartments – much more well-furnished than the communal one – in an eerie quiet. Segundus tried his best to start a conversation, but Childermass remained distracted by something in his own memories, Vinculus was uncharacteristically silent, and Hickman was too busy watching them all intently to pay much mind to what he was saying.

When he had finished the meal, Childermass thanked Hickman quietly and excused himself, Segundus gazing after him, wondering if there could be a first time for Childermass to go back on his word.

As the sun slipped behind clouds that massed ever higher and darker on the western horizon, Segundus found Childermass in their room packing his bag.

“Will you not stay?”

Childermass looked at him over his shoulder, frowning at something beyond him, and shook his head. Segundus’ stomach curdled, turned sour. It seemed too much like a conversation they had had innumerable times before.

He followed as Childermass descended the stairs into the main hall, decades and centuries rearing up in the shadows and whispering in his ear.

“I can’t. I must…” Childermass stepped back, looked around at the room, at the night pressing against the wide bank of windows. He scrubbed at his face. “It’s too much, I can’t think.”

“Will your flat be any better?” Segundus asked, stepping forward, catching his hand.

“It’s not my flat I need to see,” Childermass said, his gaze fixed on a point over Segundus’ shoulder.

It came to him with sudden clarity. He pressed Childermass’ hand, tried to pull him closer.

“At least wait until daylight,” said Segundus. “What use will it be now?”

“I could always find my way there in the dark.”

“But now?” Segundus asked, trying to make him see. “With paved roads and new walls, and a motorbike that can’t jump a fence?” Childermass laughed a little and shook his head.

“John, I-”

“You didn’t listen to me the last time,” pleaded Segundus, knowing it was a low blow but feeling the hollowness in his chest echoing the closer Childermass got to the door. “Please listen to me now.”

It was enough to get Childermass to look at him, eyes wide, shoulders dropping.

“We can go tomorrow – I’ll come with you, but please,” he closed his eyes, shook his head, “not tonight.”

“If you feel so strongly about it,” Childermass sighed, brought a hand to Segundus’ shoulder, “then alright.”

Segundus felt the tension leave him the moment Childermass’ lips pressed against his brow.

Starecross at night was a restless beast, all creaking timbers and screeching owls. Segundus held Childermass tight against his chest.

He fell asleep quickly, and dreamt of roaming with Childermass over bright summer moors.

*

The sun was barely risen when Childermass packed cameras and notebooks into the bike’s panniers to set off on his twenty mile journey.

Of course, Segundus could not have let him go by himself. He knew how his own chest had reacted to the sight of Starecross after so many years, and he could not let Childermass face it alone. Although, if he had been nervous the first time he had ridden on Childermass’ motorbike, it was nothing compared to how it felt now. He had never been particularly fond of riding, never mind _this_.

Segundus had never visited the site of Hurtfew Abbey, not since it had vanished, not at all in this most recent life. It was an odd space, he thought as he walked with Childermass up to the visitor centre.

It was a pilgrimage site without anything to see. When Segundus had been in London Hanover Square had been a different experience. People milled around the city anyway, there were the other houses in the square to look at, the park of green in the middle, the excitement of a pigeon flying out of nowhere. Soho Square had been very different indeed.

Hurtfew Abbey was too vast. It was not immediately obvious which parts were not there until one found oneself walking back to where one had started without having thought of changing direction. The beck was the place where the absence was most obvious, where it rushed giddily into nothing, only to reappear again a little further downstream.

The visitor centre was the strangest of it. It was a small, temporary-looking building which looked as if it had been temporary for at least twenty years, filled with pictures and paintings and artists’ impressions of Norrell, of Strange, of the house itself.

“They got that bit wrong,” Childermass pointed out, tapping an etching of the house. “The stables were on the north side.” His eyes were wide, unfocused, and Segundus reached for his hand.

“An unlikely friendship, was it not?” Segundus asked, looking up at a copy of the famous portrait of Strange and Norrell. He wondered if two men so different from each other had ever sat for a joint portrait. He added, as he gazed on the no-longer-familiar faces, “I had forgotten what they looked like.”

Norrell was more or less as he remembered – small and bewigged, uncomfortable and belligerent; but he had remembered Strange as being more handsome than the portrait showed. He remembered, suddenly, that first meeting in the Shadow House: the giddy, intimate feeling of stepping into another man’s dreams, that first glimpse of Strange’s face in the waking world. He felt the echo of it climb up his spine, the hairs on his arms and neck lifting in a way that was thrilling rather than uncomfortable, his cheeks heating in the coolness of the room.

He shook himself and walked on. Stepping up to the next panel, he laughed aloud and tugged Childermass along. Standing in front of them was an entire board documenting the life and times of John Childermass (c.1770-1841, the board told them, resident at Hurtfew Abbey for the best part of 26 years).

“As much as I hate to say it, Cruikshank caught you quite well.” Segundus pointed towards a large reproduction of a satirical cartoon which showed Childermass in full flow, addressing a gaggle of striking workers. He was wearing a long ragged cloak, and his hair looked a little like the flapping wings of ravens. The caption read _The Raven Steward advocates for Reform_. There was a pigeon sitting on the head of a man at the front of the gaggle, listening intently. The tableau was ridiculous, but the figure did indeed look very like Childermass – like he had looked, older than he was now, somehow more sure of himself, although Segundus had never thought that to be something he lacked.

“I had forgot,” Childermass said, voice low.

“You hated this, do you remember? Arabella purchased a print and sent it up because she thought it was so amusing.” Segundus hadn’t remembered it himself until that moment, but the warmth of the memory, of the letter that had accompanied the picture bloomed in his heart. He had a sudden wish to speak to Arabella Strange, and the bloom withered as he realised he could not. Arabella, at least, was not a loss he had had to bear, not until now.

There was so much loss in him now, more than a lifetime’s worth. He wondered if he would ever get used to it, to these swings between happy memories and the realisation that they were so long gone, if he would ever find the balance between overfull and hollow. Equilibrium seemed to  pull teasingly out of reach.

“There’s you.” Childermass laughed lowly, and pointed to a small, nervous-looking figure peeking apprehensively from behind the Childermass in the picture. “He never got you nearly so well.”

They looked around the information panels and the display cabinets – showing nothing from Hurtfew Abbey itself, but things of the time; scraps of ephemera that had been left elsewhere. There was a small pair of spectacles, a letter from Mr Norrell sent to John Murray railing against Jonathan Strange’s book, a clay pipe, all neatly labelled and carefully kept under glass. There was a book – much used and travelled, coming apart rather that the spine: _Revelations of Thirty-Six Other Worlds_. Childermass reached out to this, his fingers coming to rest against the glass.

They walked the grounds, Segundus keeping Childermass’ hand in his own and revelling in the feeling of it, to be walking around so openly. Even still, in the rare moments another person came within view of them he felt his heart twist and had to fight the urge to snatch his hand away. Childermass held firm, tightened his grip when he felt Segundus’ panic, and Segundus squeezed back. He had, Segundus supposed, made a career of audacity.

After a few hours of roaming the grounds in silence investigating this or that corner, they settled on the grass near the disappearing Hurt. Segundus was surprised by the heavy sigh that broke free from Childermass, turned to see him sitting like a child, his knees pulled up under his chin. He tried to reach out, but was momentarily unable, paralysed by the sight of such open vulnerability. It was like gazing on a wound, like the first time he had seen the scar which had, in some strange way and after everything, brought them together.

“I thought…” Childermass said, then took a deep breath and began again. “I thought it would be different.”

Segundus shook the inaction from his shoulders to wrap his arms around Childermass and hold him close, was glad that he could do even as little as this. He stopped himself before he could think too long on what might have happened had he not stopped Childermass from coming during the night.

“I thought it would be easier.” Childermass’ voice was low, rough, his hand tight in Segundus’. “But it’s so much the same. When I came back after the pillar had gone, it looked just the same. I thought _something_ would have changed.”

“I suppose there weren’t the information boards and the artists’ impressions back then,” Segundus said, an attempt at a joke that seemed – against all odds – to work. Childermass gave a low snort and Segundus felt him smile against his shoulder.

“Aye, I could have done without them,” Childermass said, pulling back a little. “If they were going to do it, you’d think they’d’ve at least got it right.”

“Perhaps they should have asked you to do it. Instead of all that nonsense translating the Book of the Raven King and being instrumental in the restoration of English Magic, you could have been writing _The History of Hurtfew Abbey_.”

Childermass laughed again, a single low chuckle which seemed more an expression of disbelief than a laugh, and looked up to the missing piece of sky. Segundus followed his gaze, watched where the clouds didn’t quite match up together. They seemed to skitter behind some obstruction and reappear on the other side, although his eye could not quite make sense of it. It made him rather dizzy, and he soon found himself lying on his back beside Childermass, cloud-watching.

“What would that have helped?” It was so long before Childermass spoke that Segundus, for a moment, could not quite remember what he had said. “The curiosity of bored lords and ladies?” He snorted, and sat up. “No. How would that have advanced anything? What does it matter where the stable block was?”

“It mattered to you earlier,” Segundus pointed out, and immediately wished that he hadn’t.

“And you commented on the mirror missing from your office,” Childermass countered sharply, looking not at Segundus but at the expanse of park and river beside them, each trailing off into nonsensibility. “What do either of those things matter now?”

“They don’t, I suppose,” Segundus said carefully. “Only how they make us feel.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes until he saw sparks. “And everything seems to be making me feel rather a lot at the moment, I don’t know about you.”

He hadn’t exactly meant it as a joke, but Childermass laughed anyway, although his eyes stayed on the place where the beck vanished.

“Do you remember,” Childermass said slowly, drawing it out as if he was only just remembering it himself, “the last spell I was working on?”

“The one we were attempting to translate?” Segundus asked, blinking at the change of subject and sitting up. “You had only managed a symbol or two when… something about a river?”

“That’s the one.” Childermass nodded, squeezed his shoulder, and stood.


	21. Chapter 21

Against the fading light over the moors, Starecross formed itself into a squat, sinister shadow. The house was dark, the windows of all the rooms currently in use facing south over the moor and invisible from the approach from the village. The sound of the motorbike and the enclosure of the helmet deadened any other sounds they might have heard, whether industry from the house or the bleating disapproval of the sheep on the moor.

Childermass didn’t reveal what he was thinking of, but vanished into the maze of corridors as soon as they were across the bridge – where he had got to, Segundus couldn’t begin to guess. The look in his eyes had been familiar, the determination in his movements as he strode back into the house a welcome sight after the hesitation which had seemed to consume him earlier.

Familiar and welcome though it may have been, it soon occurred to Segundus that it was familiar in the way Childermass’ habit of propping his boot-clad feet on tables was familiar, in the way that his tendency to suggest corrections to papers that Segundus had not yet asked for comments on was familiar. It was familiar in the way that the particular frequency of magic that had shivered up Segundus’ spine as they crossed the threshold was familiar, Childermass shadowed and gone before he had time to turn and ask.

The good mood that had buoyed him even through the drive back to Starecross left him, and, feeling more than a little abandoned although still in a purposeful mood, Segundus went to Hickman to see if there was anything he could do. He found her scowling at her computer screen with the phone jammed between her ear and shoulder, and was waved away with a definite hint of annoyance.

Being thus rejected and unable even to find Vinculus for company, he returned to his own habit and turned to the library.

With more purpose and more sense in him than the previous days, he looked through the books this time rather than just trailing his fingers over their spines in wonder. They were arranged more carefully than he remembered them, he noticed, labels on their spines proclaiming their proper places rather than the casual, ever-evolving arrangement he remembered.

The library now served as more of an archive than the true university library – he knew most of the volumes had been transferred to a building in the village. The Old Library (as the sign on the door proclaimed it) now held various books on the history of Starecross itself, Segundus’ original library, and first and rare editions of publications by various Chancellors, as well as by Segundus and Childermass themselves.

He had intended to find some text on the translation of the Letters in order to better remind himself of the spell Childermass had spoken of, but as he searched (and truly only half-heartedly, distracted as he was by the riches on display, as put-out as he was by Childermass’ behaviour), one volume in particular caught his attention – published in 1919 and titled _Bird and Book: Reminiscences on a Century of Starecross_. He took it up and just held it in his hands for a moment before slowly paging through from back to front. He skimmed until he saw names he recognised (he found he recognised most of them in one way or another, but he was becoming familiar with the particular texture of recognition that meant it was from _before_ , as he had come to think of it).

“ _We often arranged ourselves around the fire in the library of a Sunday,_ ” James Cordrett had written, the small line of attribution told him, in his 1883 memoir. Segundus had learned of his magic – remembered the light in the lecture hall, the words on the page – but behind that lay the faint image of a small red-haired boy watching him, solemn and serious. “ _The girls were invited up from the village accompanied by Miss Frye, and we would gather together around the Headmaster’s chair. We did not see much of him outside of this little ritual, as he was by this time rather aged and did little teaching himself – Mr Levy who later took over from him organised most of that._

“ _Each week he would read us a little from a great book he spread open on his lap – I recall it as a book full of wonder, but later learned it was a collection of folk-tales of the North East (compiled, I discovered, by a friend of the Headmaster, a little-known theoretical magician by the name of Honeyfoot). They featured the Raven King and fairies, and it was always difficult for we boys to sleep on a Sunday night, full as our heads were with magic and adventure._

_“There was always a certain amount of anxiety on being called to the office of this mysterious Headmaster, so seldom was he seen, but when one approached with bowed head and hands clasped behind one’s back, he would always speak in a kind and gentle manner and put us all entirely at our ease. Why none of us seemed to remember this, I do not know. Even when one was being disciplined, it was with the weight of disappointment rather than the snap of the birch cane, but we nurtured a healthy level of fear and respect for him nevertheless. Perhaps it was merely the fear of the very aged that all children, I think, are prone to._

_“It was a happy time, and by all accounts an unusual one. I was sent there directly from my governess, but some of the other boys had attended other schools before coming to Starecross and told tales of punishments and teachers (ones that I hope to this day never to encounter) which made us all glad to be in a place as warm and as friendly.”_

Segundus smiled, felt warmth bloom in his chest, and closed his eyes for a moment. He flicked further through, came upon a letter sent by Wilfred Brackworth to his brother in 1820.

“ _It is most astounding, dear brother, and such a change from Tonbridge! There is a wilderness about the place, being so remote – although I do miss being able to sneak off to into the town – but there is such magic here! The Headmaster – Mr Segundus, we met him when father brought us to investigate, do you recall? – is a small man and seems as though he would hardly say boo to a goose – far removed from Mr Knox! Despite this, the other boys all treat him with a great degree of respect, although when I enquired as to how often the birch was brought out, they laughed and said not at all! – what do you think of that, Edward?_

_“The classes are mostly as you would expect – a lot of dull history and very little actual magic, although Gus (our little nickname for the Headmaster, but only behind closed dormitory doors!) promises us we will start in the Spring Term. He is a stickler for theory, it seems. He is assisted by three younger men – Mr Hadley-Bright is a great favourite of ours as he faught Napoleon himself, Mr Purfois, and Mr Levy – they were all of them aprentices to Mr Strange, and tell us about the magic he taught them and what all he did in the war (well, H-B does). There is also the curious character of Mr Childermas, who is sometimes here and sometimes not, and who is so rough I at first mistook him for a servant and asked him to take my trunk to the dormitory. This made the other boys laugh and earned me a rather amused look from the man, so I quickly learned my mistake._

_“If I am honest, dear Ned – and when can one be honest if not with one’s only brother? – Mr Childermas is perhaps my favourite, despite his demeanour. One evening he came in after dinner – he had been on one of his frequent journeys – and beckoned us all gather round him (while this was happening, old Gus was sighing and rolling his eyes, but Thomas said he saw him smile so he could not have been terribly upset, and in any case he sat beside Mr C to listen as raptly as any of us), and told us a story about the Raven King. I have written out as much as I can remember, as it was so entertaining, and will send a copy in with this letter. While he told the tale he plucked raven feathers from thin air, and we all gasped as he produced a globe of light which he held in the palm of his hand. It was so bright that the room seemed to dim around us, and when the story was done he let us pass it around._

_“It was such a strange feeling that I barely think I can describe it. It seemed to weigh nothing at all, but still I felt it press in my palm. I worried that it may have burned, but it felt – if anything – cool, like a breeze passing over my hand. It was as though I was holding the very moon._

_“Then came the most astonishing part – Mr C looked at Gus, who gave him the smallest nod and smile that I doubt anyone else noticed but I had just happened to glance up then, and Mr C then taught us how to produce the light ourselves! We were up the whole night practising, and the dorm started to look more like a summer’s day than an autumn night. Poor old Chapman never quite managed it, and we did rather rag on him for it._

_“My brother, I am a proper magician now! I cannot wait to show you at Christmas, and tell you even more of what goes on here (perhaps while I illuminate the room with my magic!)._

_“Give my best to Knoxy._

_“Your affectionate (and magical) brother,_

_“Wilfred._ ”

Segundus found himself laughing aloud, and saw in his mind’s eye the gaggle of boys sitting on the floor, staring wide-eyed up at Childermass. He had never known them to be so silent. He couldn’t quite recall the tale Childermass had told – the footnote on the page informed him that Brackworth’s copy of it had been at some point separated from the original letter and lost – but he remembered a winter’s night and a beautiful youth on a horse, all speckled by fresh snow.

“This is a library, Mr Segundus.” He was startled by the low voice, round with laughter, and looked over his shoulder to see Childermass propped against the Fae Diplomacy section. How long he had been standing there, Segundus couldn’t begin to guess. “Need I remind you that scholarly silence must be observed at all times?”

“Oh, will you take that self-satisfied smile from your face?” Segundus reproached. “Where have you been hiding?” It came out more softly than he had hoped, the pleasure of the book dissipating his irritation with Childermass, the memory of that evening smoothing his mood.

Childermass gave a small shrug and an exhale that was apparently supposed to serve as an answer and moved closer. Segundus pressed his lips together.

“What’s got you chuckling away in here, then?” Childermass asked, perching on the arm of Segundus’ chair and peering down at the page. “It doesn’t fit with your schoolmaster persona.” Segundus rolled his eyes and turned the book so that Childermass could read the cover.

“I always wanted Starecross to be a happy place,” he explained, turning back to Brackworth’s letter. “It seems we were successful.”

He handed the book to Childermass and rested a hand on his thigh as he watched him read. A moment later Childermass snorted and shook his head.

“It appears I made quite an impression on young Brackworth,” he laughed, and Segundus smiled up at him.

“Indeed. I studied his _Life and Times of the Raven King_ as part of my dissertation.” He squeezed Childermass’ thigh. “You put more love of magic into his mind with one story and spell than I did in five years.”

“An education isn’t formed in an evening,” Childermass said, handing him the book once more. “You underestimate yourself as always, love.”

“Where have you been hiding yourself?” Segundus asked again, closing the book and changing the subject as he felt his cheeks heat.

“Oh, I went to speak with Vinculus, see what he remembered of that last translation – which is precious little, if _‘oh bugger off will you, it’s like you never left_ ’ means what I think it does.”

Segundus glanced up towards the ceiling as if he could see Vinculus through the floorboards. He had always been circumspect – a decade of hiding from a man one came to share a home with would do that, he supposed – but there was something about his hunched shoulders and narrowed eyes that Segundus found unfamiliar and troubling. He said as much to Childermass, who shrugged.

“It’s a new world for us all, I think.”

Segundus took his hand and smiled up at him, although it felt wan.

“I feel I’ve been rather neglecting the old world, actually,” he admitted, and Childermass huffed out a laugh. “I thought I might go back to town tomorrow, decide what to do.”

“Aye,” Childermass agreed, squeezing his hand. “I’ll need to see to the flat, and some business. I’ll take you in.”

“Thank you.”

That night, he lay awake for hours. Although he was dog-tired, he could not rest. He spent the night doing what he had not had the leisure recently to do: he looked at Childermass.

He looked as tired asleep as he did during the day, the ever-present circles under his eyes darker than ever in the shadows of the bedroom. The moon shone through the window – there was no one to shut curtains against here, no winter chill to keep out – and in its pale light Segundus could see the man Childermass had once been, would once more become. He did not seem younger in his sleep, nor less troubled.

Watching the flicker of his eyelids, the minute flinch of his expression, Segundus was at once filled up with sorrow. It had been so long since he had watched Childermass like this, asleep in this bed. The decade they had missed gaped within him. He wondered how Childermass could behave as he did during the day with such a thing between them. Of course, they had always been happy to leave the other to their particular occupations, busy as Segundus had been with the school, and Childermass with his translations – but Segundus was now a man without occupation, and when that had been the case his help and company had always been welcomed by Childermass.

Perhaps he had not _been_ missed so desperately as he _had_ missed.

He reached out towards Childermass’ face, stopped just short of touching the curve of his brow.

Of course, Childermass had not felt that decade. For him, Segundus reasoned, it may well be as if he had merely set off for a journey and then returned. He was, in a way, carrying on as he generally had.

Segundus brought his hand back to his own chest. He could not touch Childermass, he did not wish to wake him. He seemed, in the pale white light shining through the window, too delicate to touch.

Segundus had already seen him shattered.

 

*

York was not to be.

Early the next morning, Segundus was cornered by Hickman and agreed to spend the day assisting her with some urgent revisions on their paper.

“Tomorrow’s as good a day as any,” Childermass replied when Segundus gave his apologies, and reassured him that he was sure he could think of something to keep himself occupied. Segundus eyed him warily, thinking of the strange mood that had taken hold of him before, but Childermass seemed to realise where his thoughts were headed and cut them off by taking his hand. “Don’t worry, John,” he said with a smile. “I’m a grown lad, I can look after myself.” He clapped Segundus on the shoulder as he left the room. Segundus frowned after him.

The revisions were made swiftly. So swiftly, in fact, that Segundus wondered if Hickman had really had any need for him. The changes she pointed out were minor, and the penetrating look she fixed on him as he thought and answered seemed to him to verge more on the side of intimidation than interest.

“Whatever you feel’s best,” was all she said on the rare occasions he disagreed, but the corners of her mouth turned down in such a way that he wondered if he had done something to displease her.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt you yesterday,” he eventually said, somewhat tentatively, having encountered this reaction for the third time.

“When did you-? Oh, no.” She raised an eyebrow and snorted, shaking her head as she turned to the last page marked by a small brightly coloured tab.

She dismissed him as soon as he had agreed with her last point, waving him out with little more than a wave and a brief “Thanks,” as she turned to pick up her phone.

He walked through Starecross, once more unable to find either Childermass or Vinculus, aware that his mood was rapidly descending into that of a sulk.

He felt that he must have done something to be so treated: Hickman’s brusqueness was one thing (she had, he reflected, never quite been one for warm companionship), but this abandonment was something more. It brought to mind his days at school, the other boys hiding from him or otherwise pretending not to notice him at all. It was not a memory that needed any clarification: he now knew he had experienced it twice over.

With this familiarity hanging over him, he resorted to what he always had. He returned to the library, looked in the catalogue to where he might find his diaries archived.

There were published versions on the shelves of the general collection, but he shied away from these as he always had. Instead he found the originals, buried deep in a locked room that served as the archive. He felt the tingle of magic at the crook of his elbows as he unlocked the glass-fronted bookcase they were kept in, but no alarm sounded. The magic seemed to recognise him, seemed to sigh against his ear like a spring breeze as he opened the door and lifted the books.

He knew the years he needed. He took the volumes out to the main desk of the library and looked through them. The grain of the paper was familiar against his fingertips, the edges more browned than he had last seen them, the pages slightly foxed.

It did not take him much looking to find the entries he needed. He read through them, memory sparking through him with every word.

He closed the book with a sigh and rubbed at his temple.

*

It was a week before they managed to get to York.

This was much later than Segundus had hoped, but between getting swept up in his work with Hickman, and bending himself to his own studies while Childermass disappeared during the day to do whatever it was he did, it had been the first opportunity.

Hickman had been the first to admit to cabin fever, and had stated over breakfast that she was going to spend the weekend with her sister in Leeds, and that they could do with that information what they would.

So Sunday found Segundus standing on the pavement outside George Honeyfoot’s house, watching as Childermass drove off into the city.

His heart was in his throat as he knocked on the front door. Inside the house, he could hear the shouts and cries of a happy household. As he waited on the doorstep, he realised his hands were shaking. He put them in his pockets.

 “Oh, John, how wonderful it is to see you! You haven’t forgotten us after all!”

The door had flown open, and Segundus smiled as he was wrapped up in Mr Honeyfoot’s – _George_ ’s arms. He was squeezed tight enough to almost crack a rib, and then handed to Maggie for the same treatment.

“How could I forget any of you?” Segundus asked, laughing. The comfort he had felt when he had first talked to George that evening at the lecture came back to him.

He met George’s smiling eyes and, for a moment, thought about telling him everything – how familiar they all were, how they had all been here before and how unutterably _glad_ he was for them. But he did not.

How do you tell a man that you have been friends for centuries? All he was able to do, in the end, was clasp his friend’s hand tightly and hope that his urgency of feeling would come through.

There had been a time, he now remembered, shortly after the discovery of the prophecy and the spell when Segundus had been seized by a most intense bout of anxiety. He had been unsure where to even begin thinking about it, and as men are prone to do in such situations, had turned to the past in the hope that it might help with the future.

In the process of going through his papers, he had come across some letters from Jonathan Strange, sent in the late summer of 1815. These were letters of an unusually morose and downcast nature, containing as they did reports of Strange’s magic, actions, and impressions of the Battle of Waterloo. There had been a spell which Strange had mentioned at length – Pale’s _Conjectures Concerning the Foreshadowing of Things to Come_ , which he had employed the evening before the battle, to distressing effect. As Strange was a magician and – Segundus had reasoned at the time – still rather missing the companionship and conversation of Mr Norrell, he had described the method of the spell and its effects to Segundus (who had found it immensely interesting but found himself unable to craft a reply to the standard he felt Strange both deserved and anticipated, and had received a rather disillusioned answer to the letter he eventually sent).

One evening after rediscovering this letter, he had sat in the library at Starecross mulling it over. He had reasoned that as he was not at war as Strange had been, the results would be more useful and less distressing than they had been on a soon-to-be battlefield. Perhaps the spell would shape itself to the situation, and have an altogether different effect.

He had attempted the spell surreptitiously. It was not a very showy spell – it required only the concentration of the magician and a few silently recited words – so it was quite impossible for Mr Honeyfoot or any of the students present to tell he was doing any magic at all. Only Childermass had looked towards him as the spell took effect, a curiously penetrating look in his eyes.

The room around him had turned unnaturally quiet – even the fire in the hearth no longer popped or crackled. The room had then taken on an insubstantial feel, as if it were merely painted on a thin sheet of muslin which light shone through with no difficulty, and which moved about in even the lightest breeze. It had made Segundus feel a little lightheaded.

Mr Honeyfoot was the first of the room’s occupants to fade. He was followed by a few of the students, then Childermass, and one by one the remaining students until the room was completely empty. Segundus had sat alone and trembling for some moments before the room itself started to change – the furniture becoming bright and plain, the books shifting themselves around on the shelves, large glass-topped display cases appearing around him. The room became lighter, although he could see no candles or fire.

Eventually, a man had appeared – no, it was a woman, but wearing a suit of trousers as she walked towards him, followed by Childermass, who wore an even stranger outfit. Mr Honeyfoot sat in a chair, but in a curiously ghostly, translucent way. Segundus had watched as Childermass spoke to the woman, who replied, but he could not hear what either of them said. Childermass had looked towards him, his mouth moving in the shape of speech, then frowned and got to his feet.

Childermass had walked over, and the weight of his hand on his shoulder had made Segundus jump a little. At this, he had dismissed the spell. When he had looked back up, Childermass still looked down at him, a frown on his features, but he had looked as Segundus was used to seeing him. The room was once more cacophonous with the crackle of fire and the scribbling of pens. Mr Honeyfoot had seemed quite his solid self once more, and the mysterious woman was gone.

“Oh!” Maggie cried, breaking his reverie. “Do come in!” She ushered them into the living room as he blinked away the haze of the memory. It clung to him like cobwebs caught at his temple.

He looked now at George, smiling and chatting beside him, and realised what that vision had meant. He thought to tell this to his friend – how impossible it was to make sense of a vision until one already knew what would come to pass, to discuss with him what possible methods a magician might use to make such spells more helpful – but felt he could not add any of his own confusion or upset to his friend’s happy, settled life. What if George decided he would like to try the memory spell for himself, eager as he always was for new magic? What effect would that have on Margaret and the girls? No, Segundus thought. He had been ghostly in his vision for a reason.

“We didn’t expect you,” Sarah said from the sofa, looking up from her magazine – a studentish-looking publication, a photocopy-collage cover on bright pink paper.

“Sarah!” Her mother admonished, and both women laughed.

“I’m sorry,” Segundus said, as he was herded into a chair by George. “I know I shouldn’t have come unannounced-” all of the Honeyfoots gave different variations of a tut at this “-but I have had such an unbelievable few weeks that I felt nothing could be as soothing as seeing good friends.”

There was a turbulence in his mind, but it was no greater than it had been since the spell – in fact he was beginning to think it would be a new constant. As he looked around the room at his friends, although it didn’t quite settle, it certainly didn’t agitate.

“I can’t tell you how glad we are that it all went well,” George said, pushing a mug of tea into Segundus’ hand. “You made us believe that you wouldn’t remember us at all!”

“I wasn’t at all certain, and didn’t want to give either you or myself any unfounded hope.” He smiled. “I feel more fortunate than I can say to still be your friend, after all this.”

“You must tell us how it happened! What was it like? I’ve been speaking to Harry Thorpe since Professor Hickman spoke at the Society – about the prophecy and your spell and, well, everything, and we both agreed that we were very jealous indeed that we couldn’t see it first-hand!”

Segundus laughed, and told the story of the spell, of his great confusion, of how he felt he might now spend the rest of his days feeling as though he was trapped between two sets of memories like a flower pressed between pages of a book, but the longer he experienced the feeling the more used to it he got. It was, he reasoned aloud, not unlike getting used to a new pair of spectacles: the world felt strange and unbalanced for a day or two, but one quickly adjusted and started to see things even more clearly than before.

It was only when the telephone rang – making him look up and see that it was now dark – that Segundus realised he had been with the Honeyfoots for hours. He stood to make his goodbyes as Sarah answered the phone, not wanting to impose any longer on any business the family might have, and promising to visit again soon.

He left the house buoyed in spirit that he had not forgotten.

Honeyfoot had offered him a lift back to town, but Segundus had declined. The August night was warm and clear, and he felt in need of a walk, having been cooped up in Starecross and in his own mind for too long.

As he reached the city centre, he found that instead of going back to Lady Peckett’s Yard, his feet were taking him to the Olde Starre Inne. He laughed a little, reasoning that there was little reason for him to fight this course.

The pub was busy but not crowded, so Segundus bought a pint and made his way to a table. It was rare for him to venture here outside of the Society meetings, but after spending most of the day in the warm company of the Honeyfoots, he found he wasn’t quite ready to go back to his room at Mrs Pleasance’s. The comfortable bustle and conversation of the pub was welcome, and although he could not see anyone he knew to speak to, there were faces he was familiar with from spying them there often and from whom he received friendly but distant nods of acknowledgement.

It was just what he needed: space and time to himself, but not entirely alone.

He sat to nurse his pint and took out his notebook, where he wrote down the memories and feelings of the day. It was a way of balancing the flow of his mind, which still sometimes felt like too much. To write it down was to open a gate and let the overflow drain away before it could cause a flood.

After he had been at this a few minutes, a band appeared in the corner and, without any introduction (it appeared they had started their set before he had arrived, and were now recommencing after a break) launched into a brisk jig. The girl on the fiddle bowed energetically, her fingers dancing along the neck of the instrument as she stamped her foot to time; the man sitting beside her with a guitar picking out the rest of the tune beside her; another man with a drum – not quite a tabor, but Segundus didn’t know enough to guess what it might be – beating out the rhythm.

It was infectious and joyous, and Segundus would have thought he had been swept up in another memory of before were it not for the microphones and speakers surrounding the band. The tune ended with a triumphant creak of a fiddle chord, and he applauded enthusiastically with the rest of the audience.

More songs followed after: _Scarborough Fair_ , sung by the girl with a melancholy air; a song warning girls away from sailors that he had some small memory of, although the tune was not what he thought he knew; another wordless tune.

There came a brief pause as the band changed instruments and retuned. The guitarist swapped his instrument for a fiddle, and the girl took up a tin whistle, and there then issued from the corner a low, creeping melody that raised the hairs on Segundus’ arms.

The girl removed the whistle from her lips and began to sing.

“ _Not long, not long my father said_

_Not long will you be ours._ ”

If the first jig had been eerie to Segundus’ newly regained senses, then this was truly otherworldly.

It was not that the song was unknown to him – indeed, how could it have been, given his occupation? – but the sense of timelessness that grew with it. It was the scene – a pub was a pub, he had learned, no matter the century and some things stayed the same: the tang of spilt beer, the smell of tobacco permeating the air, the warmth and grumble of other people; it was the band – the instruments pulled together seemingly beyond date, the sorrowful sound of the girl’s voice tugging at his heart as if she was truly being carried off to the Other Lands; it was the song itself – the words and the tune as old even as the North itself.

He knew it by heart. He had learned it twice over and had it reinforced over two lifetimes.

“ _This land is all too shallow_

_It is painted on the sky_

_And trembles like the wind-shook rain_

_As the Raven King goes by_.”

He shuddered, goosebumps rippling over his skin even in the heat of the room.

The song finished and the band stood to make a bow. They tidied up their instruments and left the stage, sliding into the crowd to talk and laugh with friends.

Segundus was aware of none of this. He was frozen, staring at his beer but unseeing of the head dissolving into the rusty body of it. He was caught in another time, in another place: The great hearth in the main hall at Starecross roared, casting shadows upon the walls and the curtains, keeping the creeping cold of the November night at bay. All was silence but for the crackle of the fire and for the gale blowing outside the windows. From nowhere came a rasping, creaking voice: “ _Not long, not long”_. He had jumped from his skin, had sloshed his hot wine all across the rug, but had not made a sound, and had never felt such relief as when he turned in his chair to see Vinculus ambling towards him, singing hoarsely under his breath.

The clunk of glass on wood roused him from this daze, and he looked up to find that another glass had joined his on the sticky table.

“Mind if I sit?” He followed the line of the arm that had put the glass down, and found Childermass looking down at him with a curious expression on his face. His face was creased with a crooked smile, but there was something shifty in his eyes.

It took Segundus a moment to find his tongue. “I hardly think you need to ask,” he replied, “but of course.”

He smiled as Childermass slid into the seat across from him, but soon had to frown and shake his head in order to clear it.

“She has a better voice than Vinculus,” Childermass commented, nodding to the singer who was now laughing with the barmaid. “Although that sounds like faint praise when I hear it aloud.”

“How long have you been here?” Segundus asked, and something mirthful danced in Childermass’ eyes.

“What, do you imagine me watching you from the shadows?” He grinned and took a swallow of his beer.

“You have said yourself that a man can’t help his training.” A smile broke through the chill the song had left on him, and Childermass let out a gruff laugh.

“I may have caught sight of you a few minutes before I sat down,” Childermass admitted, nodding his head forward to concede. “But it wasn’t from any desire to _lurk_ , as you accuse.” He arched a challenging eyebrow, and Segundus couldn’t help but shake his head fondly. “I arrived just as they started that last tune.”

“Ah,” said Segundus. “I think I see.”

Childermass gave a single nod, and in the moment their eyes caught, Segundus knew he had experienced the same thing, the same memory. It had been early, not even a year since the return of magic to England, and both of their nerves had been alert to even the most minute eddies in the current.

It was only a moment. Then Childermass rolled his head to stretch out his neck, and sat back more easily in his chair, an arm dangling over the back.

“How were your friends?” He asked, regarding Segundus over the rim of his glass.

“They were well.” He sighed. “I do wish you had come with me – he truly has changed so little! He would have loved to see you, I’m sure of it.”

“I don’t know him as you do now. I doubt he would have been as glad as you expect.” He looked towards the bar, where something seemed to catch his eye. Segundus followed his gaze but could not say what it had been.

“He talked of you,” Segundus pushed on. “He mentioned how impressed he always was with the work you did for the Society.”

“Then, if you’ll excuse me, he is too easily impressed. I was nothing but an errand boy – you know that.”

“God help you, John Childermass!” Segundus sighed, leaning back in his chair in exasperation. “Must you always cloak yourself in these needless mysteries? You were more than that and you know it. You may keep the finer points of your errands and commissions in the dark, but don’t try to play them down to me – I see through you. It’s unbearable!”

In the face of Segundus’ snap of annoyance, Childermass only let out a huff of laughter. “Are you saying that false modesty doesn’t become me?”

“I am saying,” Segundus said, “that falsehoods of any kind don’t become you.” Childermass snorted. “Yes, laugh all you like!” Although it was a common enough expression, Segundus found himself only getting frustrated in the face of Childermass’ amused smile. “You know it’s true. You may be secretive, but you’re not dishonest.” He took a gulp of his beer before continuing. “And I had hoped that you had long ago given up being secretive with me.”

“How have I been secretive?”

Segundus had to laugh at this, heard it come out sharp and bitter and had to clap a hand over his own mouth to stop it. He took a deep breath before looking as intently as he could at Childermass. “I have barely seen you in all the weeks we have been at Starecross. Only for meals and in bed.” _And even then_ , he thought with a bitter pang, _you will barely kiss me_.

It was a curious detachment – this diurnal separation and their nightly reunions. It made Segundus think of those first months he and Childermass had shared together – afraid to come too close during the day, brought together with heat in the evening when everyone else was abed. There was, however, none of that passion now. In truth, although they shared the bed and each other’s arms, there was part of Segundus that feared that one or both of them might shatter at anything more than a kiss, than the warm press of a hand. Everything now felt so brittle.

Something in Childermass’ face changed as they looked at each other, and Segundus knew. “I hadn’t thought it was like that,” said Childermass, nodding his head a little.

“Where have you been hiding yourself, John? I barely see you between dawn and dusk.”

“You’re locking yourself away with Hickman, yourself,” Childermass countered, and Segundus felt anger rise in him, hot and sharp through his breast, but gone as soon as it came.

_I miss you_ , he wanted to say, but found he couldn’t. Not here. Instead he said, “You know where we are. Your company and help would be welcome, as we’re making no secret of ourselves. You hide yourself in rooms we could never think to look in, and speak nothing of what you do.” He shook his head, rubbed his eyes with his fingers until fireworks flared behind his lids. “You needn’t keep it from me – I would not interfere. You know I wouldn’t.”

Childermass said nothing. When Segundus opened his eyes he saw the dark look on his face, in his eyes, and knew at once what he had been doing. It was what he had worried about, what he had hoped against when he had looked at his old diaries.

“Oh, John,” he sighed, and covered his face. “Not this again.”

“Surely it’s more important than ever, after all this.” Childermass gestured around at the pub, so familiar yet unmistakably modern.

“Arabella asked us not to. They don’t want it.” His head was starting to hurt, teeming with the heat and the noise.

“Arabella is dead. It’s been almost two hundred years.” Childermass’ dark eyes flashed in the dim light. “It’s prophesied – it’s bound to happen whether or not we take any conscious part. You saw what happened the last time.”

“If it is bound to happen anyway, I see no need to work against our friends’ wishes.” He straightened his back, squared his shoulders, and matched Childermass’ stare. “I keep my promises.”

“John,” Childermass sighed, “you’re so bloody stubborn.” There was a tightening at the corner of his mouth, either amusement or annoyance. In a moment his gaze softened, and he brought his arm to rest on the table. “What of Vinculus? Do we not owe him some consideration?”

This was not a line of argument that Segundus had expected, so he merely frowned at Childermass for what was clearly a second too long. Childermass sighed and leaned forward on his elbows.

“You’ve seen him,” Childermass sighed, glancing quickly over his shoulder. “You see the burden the years are on him – that is our fault. Do you not think that if we can translate him, if we can bring about the prophecy, then he might find some peace?”

Segundus frowned at his glass, clasped tight between his hands. He thought of Vinculus, realised that he knew what Childermass spoke of. It was in the hunch of Vinculus’ shoulders, in the shadowed and wary look in his eyes.

“Why did you not tell me?” He asked.

Childermass had the good grace to shrug and avoid his eyes as he sipped at his beer. “You’ve been busy with Hickman, and I knew you would say ‘ _Oh, John,’_ in the way you did.”

“The paper is nearly finished. If we work on the translation… Oh, we should never have tried that spell – perhaps we can try to undo it.”

Childermass looked at him for a long moment. If Segundus had not been so used to such a look he would have blushed and looked away. As it was, he kept Childermass’ gaze until he gave a sharp nod, a silent agreement.

It was late when they left, streetlights stripping the warm night of all colour but that peculiar orange-grey which Segundus was only now noticing the strangeness of. It was a warm night, a clear night. He looked up, but could see neither stars nor moon. He took Childermass’ hand and followed him across the bridge.

As Childermass’ building came into sight, Segundus felt as though he had missed a step. It seemed such a stark reminder of this most recent life that he had to catch Childermass’ sleeve to make him slow.

“I know,” was all that Childermass said, and guided him onwards with a hand between his shoulder blades.

The flat was unchanged. Even the mug that Segundus had left on the coffee table the morning they had left – and how long had that been? A week? A year? He had lost all concept of time – was still there, the chalky remains of the instant coffee dried to the inside like a skin. He wondered where Childermass had been today, if not here.

He was tired, his eyes and his bones aching with it, and looking around this flat he almost felt he might weep. He went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and there was his double-reflection waiting for him, looking back at him with dark-shadowed eyes. The memory of looking into this mirror while Childermass kissed his neck, the feel of being pressed back against this very sink and kissing him, breathless, for the first time, hit him like a train, and he found himself clinging to the edge of the sink while his knees trembled.

He felt so old here, where had only ever been young.

“John?”

He couldn’t bear the concern in Childermass’ voice, couldn’t stand the way he had been treated as if he might any moment crumble each day since the spell, but he couldn’t find his voice to say this. He felt the words on the back of his tongue, flitting up from where they swarmed at his sternum, but couldn’t catch hold of them to make them real, and when Childermass stepped close behind him and wrapped his arms around his waist, they took flight altogether.

Childermass said nothing, only rested his chin on Segundus’ shoulder and sighed, tightening his arms so that Segundus had to take a step back against the warmth of him. When Childermass pressed a kiss to Segundus’ cheek, it was almost enough to evaporate his annoyance, but not quite. He was too tired, felt an answering fatigue in the weight of Childermass’ chin, the lingering of his lips, and knew that it would do more harm to voice it now than to save it until morning.

He turned to wrap his arms around Childermass’ shoulders, stood with their cheeks pressed together for a long moment while he breathed in the scent of him.

In the bedroom, the streetlights highlighted Childermass’ face as he lay across from Segundus, regarding him with a heavy gaze. Those lights had seemed dim before, nothing but a ghostly luminescence that fought through the curtains. Now, compared with the dark isolation of Starecross, Segundus felt he was looking at Childermass under the light of a strange full moon.

A sensation rose up in him, one he could not grasp and could not name, but which left his chest buzzing with pressure. He wanted to say something to Childermass, felt he must, but he could not find those words in the thousands flitting through his unsettled mind.

It would be alright in the morning, he told himself, all the while never looking away from Childermass’ dark eyes.

He used to be able to read those eyes so easily, he remembered. He thought he ought to now, but then that empty decade ached wide and open inside of him, and he knew that a few months could never make up for such a lack of practise.

Childermass reached for his face, touched fingertips to cheekbones, smoothed his thumb over Segundus’ frown.

This was so familiar a gesture, so gentle a touch, that Segundus had to close his eyes. He reached up and took Childermass’ hand in his own, fell asleep with their fingers still interlaced on the sheet between them.


End file.
